Rob Liefeld Quotes

My biggest enemy for the longest time was my head. When I first became successful, it made me anxious because I was overthinking everything, and you hear so many 'fail' stories.

I thought that when you have more success that you'd feel more buoyed or feel more confident. But in fact my brain has the gift of switching it around and saying, 'Now people are expecting something. Now you're really going to let people down.'

Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.

My performance level has risen - and my anxiety-level has sky-rocketed.

It's the weight of expectation that's the hardest to deal with, really, from my point of view.

I'm thankful to get the opportunity to direct. I hope I don't mess it up.

I think, looking back, there was a lot of fear of success in me. When you are successful, you have to keep it up... it requires you to be responsible, and I had been pretty irresponsible.

I was playing and having a lot of success, but I also felt a lot of criticism behind it. I didn't know why.

I didn't handle success all that well.

I've always had this crazy thought that I have to win something; otherwise, my career's a complete failure. It's ridiculous. Will a trophy change me as a person? No. Will it make me a better player? No. So what the hell am I worried about?

The pressure of success is suffocating.

Everybody's got high expectations for me. I just don't want to let anybody down.

I think the worst enemy for success is the anxiousness to get it.

I've always hated rejection; I only want to go out there when I know I've got it right.

I feel like people are just waiting for me to fail, so I have to be careful what decisions I make in my career.

I'm always thinking 'Don't mess this up.'

I think it's one of the main negative emotional ingredients that fuels show business, because there's so much at stake and the fear of failure looms large.

Even when I had a run of successful prime-time shows, I couldn't sit down and enjoy my success. I would beat myself up and scrutinise everything. I'm a natural-born worrier.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.

A lot of times, in the beginning of my career, I put pressure on myself just because I wanted to perform so well. I just wanted to be perfect.

Show business is, essentially, a fear-based industry.

I think I'm probably a little too desperate to be successful.

We feel a lot of pressure about looking silly or appearing weak, whatever that means, or being a failure. You have to keep in your head: what's the worst that can happen?

If expectations are low, you can only impress people. But if expectations are there for you to be the leading guy, and you've been paid X amount of money, you're on a tightrope, and all of a sudden, you're looking down.