Barbara Pym Quotes

As usual, my mind is spinning in circles...is it me? Am I making mountains out of molehills? Being too analytical? Worrying about nothing? Being emotional?

Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.

Why do I doubt her? Perhaps she is just very sensitive, and hypersensitive people are false when others doubt them; they waver. And one thinks them insincere. Yet I want to believe her. At the same time it does not seem so very important that she should love me. It is not her role. I am so filled with my love of her. And at the same time I feel that I am dying. Our love would be death. The embrace of imaginings.

I'm a fairly neurotic person.

I don't think I can coach.

I know I have trouble watching my own films.

I may be the wrong person for my life.

I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.

I was an incredibly misanthrope. I couldn't relate to people my age, and I'm not sure why, as I wasn't particularly smart or interesting

I don't really know how accepted I am. Nothing ever matters to me apart from the people with negative opinions. That's literally it. That always drives me on to the next thing. It's funny, you just focus on them and then the next movie. That's the only thing you're thinking about when it comes out.

People have an overbearing need to project their inward doubt and hatred and emotions onto the outside world.

I feel self-repressed again. The old fall disease. Where is my willpower? The idea of a life gets in the way of my life...I dream too much, work too little.

I really can't watch myself. I just get too in my head about it and start overthinking everything.

But you ain't part of it, are you?" said Granny conversationally. "You try, but you always find yourself watchin' yourself watchin' people, eh? Never quite believin' anything? Thinkin' the wrong thoughts?

He thought about his people without sentimentality, with a strict closing of his accounts with life, beginning to understand how much he really loved the people he hated most.

I've given up trying to understand what people think about me.

Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.

No matter how many people are screaming your name or how many Number One hits you have, you can still wake up and feel like a loser.

It's a funny thing... but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.

It's the people that ultimately are less talented or have less confidence in what they're doing that then try to micro-manage, which lends itself to a less than ideal film.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

Well, the first thing we do is take our brain out and put it in a drawer. Stick it somewhere and let it tantrum until it wears itself out. You may still hear the brain and all the shitty things it is saying to you, but it will be muffled, and just the fact that it is not in your head anymore will make things seem clearer. And then you just do it.

I guess my main worry is that people will start hating what I hate about myself. I worry that everyone will think I am really annoying and just want me to shut up. Which would make so much sense because I annoy myself... I guess I want people to know that if they are annoyed with me, I get it, it's totally cool. Please forgive me.

I have never fit into this town, this marriage, this skin. I am the child who was picked last to play tag; I am the girl who laughed although she did not get the joke; I am the piecemeal part of you that you pretend doesn't exist, except it is all I am, all the time.

She said that by introducing me to all these great things, Mary Elizabeth gained a “superior position” that she wouldn’t need if she was confident about herself. She also said that people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don’t, nothing will work out the way they want.