Scott Stossel Quotes

I'm kind of a nervous guy. I know on television I look like I'm half asleep, but inside I'm going about 100 miles an hour.

People always think I'm not scared. I've noticed that whenever I feel stressed, everyone thinks I'm fine, and later, it's like, 'I was not fine.'

I have a way of dealing with situations where I come off awkward, or people think I’m purposely trying to make things uncomfortable. But normally I’m talking really slowly or there’s a lot of silence because there’s just nothing going on. I’m just totally freaking out, but from the outside perspective it looks like I’m in control.

nothing can wear you out like caring about people

You spend so much time, so much effort, trying to hold yourself together. And then everything falls apart anyway.

I wonder why rich people always grow fat I suppose it's because there's nothing to worry them.

Getting up in front and talking to the people who build my cars is the worst. I get so damn nervous.

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles.

I draw like other people bite their nails.

I'm generally a people-pleaser so I get high anxiety from any sort of confrontation.

I have angst in my life, but I'm like anybody. We all have angst in our lives that we pick up and fidget with and then we put down and look at some other things that make us feel good or enjoy our lives.

There is a lot of management going on with directing. Maybe that was the biggest surprise-just the amount of tending that I had to do. The different personalities . . . It's not my way, and it's never been my function before as a writer. I tend to be a moody and somewhat withdrawn person, and I felt very clearly that I had to throw that away because that wasn't allowed here - there were other people who were going to be filling that role. Sometimes it became exhausting, especially around the eleventh hour of the day.

Maybe I was just one of those people who couldn't rest easy unless things went catastrophically wrong.

If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worrying about so much.

I'm just one gigantic ball of rancid fear and self-consciousness. I'm entirely fueled by fear, so the fact that I knew it could be a catastrophic disaster made me unable to sleep, and made me work quite hard.

A couple hundred people around, and I'm shaking.

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries.

Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.

God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution—to just not relax—was kind of sucking.

I'm not a nervous person. I'm not afraid to be on TV. I'm only afraid when I write. When I'm at my desk I feel like most people would feel if they went on TV.

All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.

I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.

Don't worry about what people say.

Perceived self-efficacy in coping with potential threats leads people to approach such situations anxiously, and experience of disruptive arousal may further lower their sense of efficacy that they will be able to perform skillfully

I never had peace of mind.