J. D. Salinger Quotes

On the flip side, no one has any idea who the hell I am. I felt like I had to prove myself to them. On any new project I'm working on, the first week is nerve-wracking, but especially with these people that I admire so much and who I just want to be equal with.

We're afraid of letting people see the glory of who we are.

All the time I feel I must justify my existence.

I would say that my fatal flaw, as a human being, is that I need people to like me, and if they don't like me, I will obsess over it - and try to change my personality until they like me - even if they don't like me for reasons that have nothing to do with me, and even if they're strangers.

In many ways, I think I've always overcompensated. I was always almost too careful, because I knew if anybody ever found any way to doubt my work, then they'd start picking my life apart, too.

Don't let that nagging fear - that feeling that being different automatically qualifies you as being wrong - eat away at you.

You don't realize you're vying for the approval of everyone so much until being yourself is not approved of.

That was the biggest fear for me - being seen without my straight hair, my makeup or fake tan, being seen without my armour on. That terrified me.

I'll always have something to prove.

It's a challenge for me to make people like me. Maybe it's just my desperate need for people to like me, that I choose the characters I have to play. You will like me, I don't care what I've done, you're going to like me.

If you want to look like the people next door, you're probably smothering yourself into your dreams.

I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who didn’t really care much about what people thought about them.. but I don’t think I am.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different. I lost that fear. And once I felt the power that I had by showing the world I didn’t care about being like other people, I could never go back.

Cowards, I believe, are people who are afraid to embrace what they want or need in a natural, honest way.

I'm the type of person who feels I have to prove myself first.

Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?

It's my insecurity that makes me want to be a comic, that makes me need the audience.

I still feel I need to do things 10 times better than other players. Just to be accepted and to improve myself.

After all the work I've done, why should I suddenly be treated as a bona fide actress?

You're constantly trying to prove yourself, even after you've made it.

I just feel like I have a lot to prove.

While I was doing stand-up, I thought I knew for sure that success meant getting everyone to like me. So I became whoever I thought people wanted me to be. I'd say yes when I wanted to say no, and I even wore a few dresses.

Maybe to become famous is to reassure yourself that whatever you're lacking inside, you've fulfilled that.

When I was in school, I got there on the first day and everyone had long, blonde, straight hair, and I had short, dark, curly hair. I immediately felt I didn't fit in and started growing my hair. But I've learned that I'm only happy when I am truly me and feel comfortable and confident in myself.