Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

To tell her that I joined the parachute club was too hard for me. I didn't want to trouble her; besides, I was not completely sure about the success of my new adventure.

I didn't think I was an actor and fought it for a long time. Nobody paid for that but me.

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

Everybody has had that experience of really wanting to do something and being afraid.

I reached a point in my private life where I started having these thoughts about changing. But I was paralyzed by fear, that I would lose everything that I had worked very hard to achieve up until that point.

I myself was completely torn by the decision to start Teach For America. There was a voice in my head telling me not to do it - to take a more normal path. I did have one thing going for me, which was that I had been rejected from all the other jobs I'd applied to.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it.

With the first album, I wanted to do so many different things, and I was fighting with myself to try and see if I was worthy enough to do it.

I'm a masochist in some ways. I look for things that I think I can't do, then, for some bizarre reason, I really want to do them. Maybe one day I'll take the easy route.

Every now and then you think about your life, what you would like to be, you start at Number 1 and you go down to 100. And down at the bottom, 100, was - Stage. Go figure. That would be the last thing. It terrified me, man. But I had to do it.

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.

I have always wanted a solo career, deep in the darkest pit of myself, but I didn't dare admit it to myself even. It took me a long time to confront my fears.

It may take me a long time before I feel 'ready' to tour as a lead singer. I may never be ready... we'll just have to see.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

The conversation topic in my head is not what role I should play; it is whether I am going to play at all.

Sure, I got lost, which is an actor's worst nightmare. But it is a gift as well, because great things come out of being lost and unsure, especially if you have a controlling side or a perfectionist side, which plenty of us do.

I'm always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I'm going to get up in the morning.

I feel like I go in on a lot of things that I want to be going in for.

It's only human to have a few doubts whether to play or not.

I knew I could make people laugh but I was frightened of doing it. I thought, 'What if I'm crap, what if I'm no good at it?', but I knew I should have a go and shouldn't sit inside watching other people do it on television.

By 2013, at the age of 29, I was failing. I had left two good jobs in succession to complete a novel I'd been tooling around with since 2009, had enrolled in a graduate programme in Texas, as far away from home as possible, to finish it - and yet: what did I have to show for it after five years of work?

If you are going to be dogged with doubts you shouldn't be making movies.

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