Creative Insecurity Quotes

One of the biggest obstacles I've overcome in my life was thinking I didn't deserve to be successful. Artistically I'm not as much of a heavyweight as someone like Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell, because I'm not a creator of original music, and I worried about that for years.

The biggest insecurity I had was my singing. Even though I had sold 70 million records, there was this feeling like, I'm not good at this.

I've never loved composing, because I feel like other people do it better.

I think in my late 20s, I was starting to enter that realm of complacency, which is the most terrifying place I can imagine as an artist. I felt time creeping up on me.

I know a lot of artists and chefs don't talk about this, but sometimes you just don't get to the finish line. That honesty and tenderness is something we're kind of not supposed to express.

I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.

I don't know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

I've always been a bit of a self-doubter. I think a lot of actors are.

I guess I'm like Roger Miller who used to say that he didn't have as many jokes as he thought he did.

I've always felt like an imposter, in the whole, as a musician.

All writing seems to me worse in the state of proof than in any other form. In manuscript one's own wisdom is rather remarkable to one, but in proof it has the effect of one's private furniture repeated in the shop windows. And then there is the sense that the worst errors will go to press unnoticed!

Cheever constantly voiced doubts about his writing. Reading 'The Naked and the Dead' made him despair of his own 'confined talents.'

Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry.

I've tried writing. Two days later I'd go visit it and say, Jesus Christ, who wrote this crap?

The key to every actor is deep, deep insecurity.

I don't take compliments very easily. I think most musicians suffer from low self-esteem to some extent.

I don't know many artists who are happy with themselves all of the time.

I always hate it when I see the wrong person in massive roles, so for me, my biggest fear would be accepting a role I thought I wouldn't find the rhythm of.

I suppose that anyone who does any kind of creative work some time in their life - especially as you grow into middle age! - you come to a time where you really question more and more frequently, whether you have anything else to offer. And at its worst, you feel utterly bereft of whatever creative force it takes to do that work.

The books I haven't written are better than the books other people have.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

Sometimes, I can read a great script, and I don't like the part, or I don't think I'm right for it. I mean, there are times I've read really great parts and think there's so many other actors who could do this better than me. And I just say no to it.

I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.

I wish I could have more faith in my own music. Unfortunately, I don't.

My opinions of which of my works are good are vastly different than other people's. There is one that I'm obsessed with but I swear... no one else has ever even commented on it. So I'm a bit shy to draw attention to it.