Claire Danes Quotes

I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.

For the first part of my career, I did what I was told, and I wasn't getting anywhere. I'd get in such a state when I was asked to do something, and it didn't feel right, and I'd end up feeling that I wasn't very good.

I don't like being bad at anything.

I have a lot of growing up to do. But I think, 'Hell, is it too late?'

On the flip side, no one has any idea who the hell I am. I felt like I had to prove myself to them. On any new project I'm working on, the first week is nerve-wracking, but especially with these people that I admire so much and who I just want to be equal with.

But I know that I'm not who I was supposed to be. Who I could have been. And I know it's because I was too afraid for too long.

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows.

I actually didn't enjoy being a child particularly at all even though I had nice parents in a comfortable place to live. Just because I was too confused in generating too many answers for myself that just scared me more.

The best advice I've ever received is, 'No one else knows what they're doing either.

I was probably finding my feet more than anybody. I really have to say I was more obsessed with myself faltering than anybody else.

I always feel as if I'm a disappointment: that people want a grand dame in furs like Barbara Taylor Bradford.

I wish I could just relax sometimes and make some money, but I always feel like I have to prove some kind of big, profound point.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

Words can't describe how one would feel in that moment after doing a test for something you really want but in your heart you don't think you have a chance of getting.

I grew up doubting myself. It was a very spotty, frustrating, worrying time.

Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident. I kind of feel in between now.

When people get disillusioned and get insecure and content about the future, they tend to brood about what might have been.

Not everybody's confident their whole life.

Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was.

I know it sounds pathetic, but I don't know who I am.

I always told, Sandra Bullock was my student when she was younger, I always told her it's important that we hold on to our insecurity, the wisdom of insecurity.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'

I want to keep pushing myself so I never feel settled. I don't really know if it's going to end up working. I'm stressed out most of the time.

If we fear the unknown then surely we fear ourselves.

I was deeply uncertain of who I was and who I wanted to be. I really thought I wanted to be a much cooler guy than what I was.