Jasper Johns Quotes

I don't know what to do if I am not inspiring some sort of false fascination.

More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.

I'd be on stage in Ireland performing for thousands of people and just not believing in what I'm doing at all. And it hurt, it hurt badly. I knew every day that I couldn't continue this way.

People make the mistake of thinking they've got to perform just because someone has said something about their potential.

It's something that I feel every young person goes through, this idea that they're not doing enough, or that they're stuck. Definitely when I was in high school I was like, 'What am I doing here, I want to be an actor, instead I'm just stuck at school and I'm not doing anything.'

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.

I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.

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 have two books that were published quite some time ago. I start to read about three sentences. I have to close it. I am so self-conscious. Who did I think I was?

I was like, 'Josh Tillman, you are not a songwriter. You are an ape. Stop thinking of yourself as a songwriter.'

In school, I had a tough time fitting in, and dancing was my way of being in my own element. As a teenager, I became a bit disillusioned with it. Even with competitions, I'd win, but still there would be tears.

I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.

I feel self-doubt whether I'm doing something hard or easy.

I always wanted to be a Broadway girl. But once I got Tony-nominated, it really messed with me, because it was like, yes, I'm getting this affirmation that you're right where you're supposed to be, but there was still this voice saying, 'You're not good enough.'

It seems like I'm one of those people that has the personality where, if I win an award, I wake up the next day, and I'm like 'Oh, but I didn't win this award though, or this didn't happen.'

I'm not confident at all. You just pretend you are.

You don't wanna see your work, because you might find out that you do not like it.

It's not important what other people call you. If you yourself know you're a fake, that's tougher to live with.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that I was fooling somebody - I don't know who or what - maybe myself. I have feelings some days where there are scenes with a lot of responsibility, and I'll wish, 'Gee, if only I had been a cleaning woman.'

If there is one question I dread, to which I have never been able to invent a satisfactory reply, it is the question what am I doing.

The reason why we are disenchanted with ourselves is because we entertain in the depths of our psyche a kind of vision-an anticipated vision of what we could be if we would be what we might be.

How my achievements mock me!

I'm going to end a life that I thought could contain every kind of greatness but that in fact consisted only of my incapacity to really want to be great. Whenever I arrived at a certainty, I remembered that those with the greatest certainties are lunatics.

When I look at myself, I don't see the man I wanted to be.

I'm not really sure of anything. I have no personality or opinion on anything. I just sort of float around and lie to my dog.