Joyce Carol Oates Quotes

I have a lot of insecurities, but you learn from your failures.

Looking back, my life seems like one long obstacle race, with me as the chief obstacle.

The hardest thing to do is to fail and keep pushing at the same time.

I came to understand and observe that we're all going to face obstacles. We're going to have challenges. We're going to fail. We're going to have success. But all of it is going to ultimately be character-building. And it's not going to deter us from wanting to achieve, to strive, and be successful.

No matter who you are, and no matter what you've accomplished, I have yet to meet someone who doesn't still feel like they're banging their head against some wall over something in their way.

She thinks, I failed twice. If I failed twice I'm going to fail forever. No! That is not the law of life. If you failed twice that means you can learn. It's just a learning experience. It's an obstacle. An imaginary obstacle. She made it real. She made failing a journey of life... Instead do again and make a journey of your life.

The process of achievement comes through repeated failures and the constant struggle to climb to a higher level.

I'm kind of a failure. I mean, I'll be honest. I'm successful in that I'm getting to work on great stuff, but I think I'm a failure in all the personal stuff that is most important to me.

It's murder to doubt yourself in life. It took until I was 45 to get to that point. As hard as it is in your work, it's harder in your life. But it can be done.

Setbacks motivate me.

I've had great success and I've had catastrophic failure. It's really how you handle the rough stuff that defines you, I think.

Every journey that is successful has culs-de-sac and speed bumps. I carry a wisdom gene through my life through the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Look, you do the bloody well best you can. You fumble. You make mistakes.

Anybody who's serious about their passion in life gets doors slammed in their face, literally and figuratively.

While I still have more good days than bad days, I'm going to keep playing.

I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I'm like, 'My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don't have it. I just want to chill.' We all have self-doubt. You don't deny it, but you also don't capitulate to it. You embrace it.

When people come to me and tell me I was terrific in this or that, I do not want to fall flat on my face the next time. But, tough, I have fallen flat before. You just get up and dust yourself off.

Failure has been the great theme of my life, I think.

Setbacks are just learning experiences.

I fail frequently - I just try to keep it quiet.

You know, after all these years, it's just like we are who we are and it's a struggle for me and sometimes I'm heavier and sometimes I'm thinner.

Any time you're working on big things, you're going to get criticized along the way.

You grow up a bit damaged or broken then you have some success but you don't know how to feel good about the work you're doing or the life you're leading.

You learn a lot about yourself when things aren't going well. It's always good to be the underdog.

I read somewhere that failure is an event, not a person, but I never feel that way. It's who I am.