Creative Self-Doubt Quotes

Hindsight is the most dangerous thing imaginable for me. I imagine that's the case for most filmmakers. And I would love to be a filmmaker who was an exception to that rule, but I'm certainly not.

I think that's why often people in creative fields can feel so alone is because there's a constant third eye, that constant watcher.

In the creative process, my ego has always been a huge tyrant ... a dictator and kind of rude and very misleading, because sometimes when I'm doing something, I say, "This is great! This is fantastic! Very genius!" And 20 minutes later, I feel like a dead jellyfish. "You are a stupid a**hole. This is a piece of sh*t. Nobody will care about it."

If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first line.

I look at my paintings for a very long time before letting them out of my studio. I like to get on the treadmill and look around at all of my paintings while I exercise. I try to stare them down to make them reveal their weaknesses. If they reveal weaknesses, they get repainted.

Too many bands record an album and feel, 'Well, this is okay,' but after a time, they grow to not like it.

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.

I don't like to watch my work after I do it because it just - I'll always look at the wrong things.

When people tell me I'm an artist, I say, 'What?' It's impossible for me to take the idea seriously.

The confident artist is a fool.

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.

When I say I don't like my own work, that doesn't mean it isn't better than everyone else's.

I alwaysthought of myself as a competent, minor poet. I know who I'm up against.

I always wanted to be a writer, and I did want to be a novelist. In college I took a couple of classes that taught me I would never be a novelist. I discovered I had no imagination. My short stories were always thinly veiled memoir.

It’s very difficult for me to appreciate my own songs as I criticise them a lot.

Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.

I'd go for "really great writer." Although I don't think I am. I know I have a style which is recognizable. I think you can see Terry Pratchett in every book. I like doing it. I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it.

Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them.

I think there are certain subjects I don't want to tackle, that I don't think I could do a good job with. I don't think I'd be good with... broad comedy? I don't know. Maybe I would.

I made a decision when I started writing 'All is Song' to take the compliments I had for 'The Wilderness' and try to be confident and not overwhelmed by it.

When you're watching, I find two things happen. You either watch a film and it's really good and then you think, "Why can't I do that?" Or you watch a film and it's not good, and you think, "Why am I doing this?" So either way, it feels like being at work.

Every time I write a song it feels like it could be the last one I do, or it always feels like a fluke.

I struggle with confidence, every time. I’m never completely sure I can write another book. Maybe my scope is too grand, my questions too hard, surely readers won’t want to follow me here. A novel is like a cathedral, it knocks you down to size when you enter into it.

I feel like one thing that a lot of creative people go through is that they feel like they don't have the right to be creative or to put their stuff out there. I'm glad that blogging from a young age kind of got that out of the way for me.