J. D. Salinger Quotes

It wasn't so much that he minded telling Leslie that he was afraid to go; it was that he minded being afraid. It was as though he had been made with a great piece missing - one of May Belle's puzzles with this huge gap where somebody's eye should have been. Lord, it would be better to be born without an arm than to go through life with no guts.

Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.

I feel like 2013 was one giant snowball of me being confused with my place in life and within the group. A lot of it was self-confidence issues, a lot of outside issues, and a lot of me questioning the future of what I was doing. And my mistake was letting all that influence me so that I wasn't the best I could be in life!

One thing I learned about that I always knew about myself - that I always been afraid of myself.

Every book takes you to the terror, that terrible place of possible failure.

Fear to fear. Be afraid to be afraid. Your worst enemy is within your own bosom. Get to your knees and cry for help, and then rise up saying, 'I will trust, and not be afraid.'

When I got a tiny bit of success, I was petrified that I was going to lose it. I still feel it.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

I sabotage myself for fear of what my bigness could do.

I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.

Now I'm where I want to be and who I want to be and doing what I always said I would and yet I feel I haven't won at all. Running for my life and never looking back in case there's someone right behind me shoot me down and say he always knew I'd fall. When the crazy wheel slows down where will I be? Back where I started.

You go through spells where you feel that maybe you're too sensitive for this world. I certainly felt that.

I am really driven, but my drive doesn't effect the conversations I have in my head about life, and my worries and fears and insecurities.

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.

How hard could it be? Is it really going to hurt? You get into that deep well of emotion if you are by yourself. Why am I here? What's the point of going on? If I can't do what I want to do, then what's the point?

Ever since I was a little girl, I've worried too much. It always bothers me because sometimes you end up worrying more about the worry and you are not resolving things that are right there in front of you. I have been like that all my life, and it's hard to change.

But when it comes to writing the thing that I've sort of been thinking about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do.

I'm afraid of me.

I can't deal with actors! I can't deal with myself. We're neurotic and miserable ... I love doing what I'm doing, but while I'm doing it, I'm miserable.

I can see how, given a certain degree of sensitivities, proclivities and rage, I could have ended up differently.

The more I thought to myself, 'Are my thoughts right, am I being obedient enough?' the worse it was... one of the most painful things you can experience in life is not so much physical pain, but being self-occupied. Because to the extent you are self-occupied, that's the extent you will be in pain.

It's no sin to admit that you feel vulnerable and lost.

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.

Shyness is invariably a suppression of something. It's almost a fear of what you're capable of.

I obviously bring all of my insecurities along with me to any role that I tackle.