Kumail Nanjiani Quotes

This is not Tolstoy. I don't want to know what critics and professors think of what I'm writing. It might hurt my feelings.

I'm such a coward that unless I get a good writer, I don't want to make a picture.

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer.

I'm not a very good writer. I'm working at it.

I had to take a big risk by writing my young adult book series 'The A Circuit' and putting myself out there in that way. I don't consider myself a good writer, so I had to rely on a co-writer. Still, I knew that people would judge me and my writing. I am really proud of the way the series turned out.

For artists, we're always looking for approval. We're putting our artwork out there and saying, 'What do you think?'

I watched artists who blew up before me become parodies of themselves. I wasn't listening to people when they told me that I had nothing to say, and I can't listen to people now when they tell me I'm the bomb, even though I want to.

Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within.

If you're a creative person, you'd better not read what people write about you, because if it's good it'll blow your head up and it'll force you not to take the subway and you'll start taking cabs, and you'd better stay around people, and if it's bad, it just hurts your feelings so much it discourages you.

You know what i can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, i mean endlessly, i've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?

When we have sold our identity to the judges of this world, we are bound to become restless, because of a growing need for affirmation and praise.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

The characters I didn't have actors in mind for, that was the scary moment. Because in any production, until you find the right person, you're constantly judging your writing or what it is that isn't working here or not clicking here, because you have amazing actors coming to read for it, and if something's not clicking, it can't be them because they're amazing actors. You're sort of completely doubting yourself.

When I first started writing the album, "Cry Baby" was a song that I really wanted to write because it represented all of these personal insecurities that I had for a long time.

You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes.

I look very foolish. To a lot of people I look foolish in what I'm doing and I understand that. The only thing that matters is how I feel and if I let how they feel affect me it'll change how I feel.

In political life, dissatisfaction is remedied, or at least combated, through action. For as long as you are not totally satisfied, you remain active and keep going. In literary life, at some point you have to stop and allow others to read what you have written. I find that difficult. I am probably too proud. In any case, that is why I have never published anything. But I do plan to do so one day.

I’ve never felt like I’ve exactly traded on my looks. When I was a teenager, I was an ultra-late bloomer, and my mom would say it was a blessing, because it means you never have to wonder if guys are only interested in you because you’ve got boobs. I would have been thrilled if guys were interested in me because of my boobs! Similarly, I think I’m lucky that I’ve never had a crisis about whether the only reason I’m successful is because I’m crazy hot. It’s not something that crosses my mind.

Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.

There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before.

Surely when a man is painting a picture he ought not refuse to hear any man's opinion... Since men are able to form a true judgement as to the works of nature, how much more does it behoove us to admit that they are able to judge our faults.

I don't think I could form my writing into scripts or novels. It's so sporadic. My writing's pretty poor. I often think, "Who's this for?" Sometimes it's impressions of the day or my life, or it's fiction. Sometimes it's about things I want to remember, or I try to write in really awful French.

With six weeks' worth of recuperation time, you'll also be able to see any glaring holes in the plot or character development. And listen--if you spot a few of these big holes, you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us.

I learned from her that every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.

It's hard to imagine a place like that really exists. People have been judging me my whole life.