James L. Brooks Quotes

My songs are about not knowing who to be and not knowing how to act.

I just had one of those 'what the hell are we doing' moments.

I'm not even sure who I really am sometimes.

There have been times when you doubt yourself. You don't know if you're working on the right things.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

Not sure of my place in the world (still up for debate) and not sure what I wanted to do with my life (not really up for debate).

I just look around and say, I'm a mess. I don't know why I do things.

I do struggle with the fact that I don't have all the answers.

I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.

Why was I feeling this way? Why was everything so bad in my life? I had no answers to these questions.

There was a time where I was really confused about who I was and what I was doing, and I was just kind of depressed.

Everybody has their doubts in their 20s, but I've always loved sort of having a sense of direction.

I have absolutely no sense of my success whatsoever, in fact, I only have a sense of not doing what I intended to do. I don't know who I am.

I don't even recognize myself sometimes.

During those formative times, I really didn't know what was going on, and I was sort of torn in a thousand different directions with how I felt about what I was doing.

I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.

Sure, I’m dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself.

Sometimes he thinks that if he could only trace the path of his life carefully enough, everything would become clear. The ways that he screwed up would make sense. He closes his eyes tightly. His life wasn't always a mistake, he thinks, and he breathes uncertainly for awhile, trying to find a pathway into unconsciousness, into sleep.

I think the biggest obstacle I still have to overcome is myself, and just kind of struggling every day with what to do with the work and where to go next.

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.

When I lost my way, and When the road was too long, I was muttering to myself. Life is just that way.

I think that there's some confusion in my own mind about what I believe.

What, what am I to do with all of this life?

The pain of not knowing what to do was exceeded only by that of knowing what I had done.