Anne Beatts Quotes

I don't feel secure at all. I don't know what actor would feel they've made it. I feel like I'm just starting.

It's normally the kiss of death to be identified as a rising star, or someone to watch.

Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.

Success is so fleeting; even if you get a good book deal, or your book is a huge success, there's always the fear: 'What about the next one?'

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

I've only really had one period when I lost myself and felt like I was going to lose my career, and that was when I first began presenting 'X-Factor' spin-off 'The Xtra Factor' two years ago. I was worried if I did a rubbish job live on Saturday night TV that my music career was going to get affected and I would lose everything.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

It's something that I feel every young person goes through, this idea that they're not doing enough, or that they're stuck. Definitely when I was in high school I was like, 'What am I doing here, I want to be an actor, instead I'm just stuck at school and I'm not doing anything.'

I've always been really hard on myself. If I didn't book a job, I would cry.

You have this idea that you'd better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous.

It would have been great to have had 10 victories and been in the playoffs and have gone all the way and then said, 'Goodbye,' but it didn't work out that way.

I want to let you in on a little secret: I don't always feel like I'm a success. That's right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I've just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I'm trying to communicate with.

When you make something that you're really proud of, and it doesn't do well, you can live with it. The hard part is when you make something that you have to compromise on and it doesn't do well.

I'm actually constantly a bit nervous because I never want to disappoint anyone, you know?

Nothing ever comes out the way I hope it will. That first vision, that initial vision you have of a book, what it's going to be like when it's done, it begins to go wrong the second you start to write.

I have spent my whole career worrying that the big bad pop monster was going to eat me when I wasn't looking.

The time period I had in my life to look like an idiot and fail, and for no one to see that, came and went when I was 17. When you have early success, people are just lying in wait.

True, foolish risks can lead to difficult consequences. But having said that, don't be so scared of failure and disappointment that you fail to dream.

At certain points, I was afraid there was something - a missing chink of skill - that was going to prevent me from having a movie that was financially successful. That frightened me.

Every time I do something, I worry it's my last job.

The questions that loom can be intimidating. 'What kind of moves is she gonna make? What is she gonna do?' There is this pressure that you're supposed to keep impressing.

As cricketers we fail all the time. You score a hundred every now and again but you get out between nought and 20 far more often. If you get 50, you feel bad because you should have got a hundred. Even if you get a hundred, you feel you should have got 150. So you're always failing.

My biggest fear, the only fear that I have is failing. I hate to fail at anything that I do and that's really my only fear in life, to be a failure.

Obviously, making my debut at such a young age, people put a lot of pressure on you.