Hidden Struggle Quotes

No one consciously wants to destroy themselves. It always comes in a disguise. But then you have to deal with it some way.

An important lesson: Things that look like an overnight success usually aren't.

For every finish-line tape a runner breaks -- complete with the cheers of the crowd and the clicking of hundreds of cameras -- there are the hours of hard and often lonely work that rarely gets talked about.

Not a lot of people see that when you're growing up. You don't get to see that people really have to work hard to become as good as they are.

My twenties were a write-off. It's a cruel illness, because you can't see it and you can hide it so well.

Just because people don't meet you doesn't mean they're not out there breaking their asses trying to get around.

If you were ever a ballerina, you know the pain: just to be able to look like it's all so light, but when they take off their shoes, it's all bloody.

Often the people with the biggest smiles can be struggling the most.

This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.

You wouldn't know I was sick unless you knew I was sick.

In the digital age of 'overnight' success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked.

I struggled many times when maybe it didn't look like I was struggling, and I had to work hard every day.

People close to me wouldn't have thought that I had a drinking problem because it wasn't evident although towards the very end of my drinking perhaps it became a little bit more of an issue.

I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.

I almost died, secretly, behind closed doors.

You see the guys sign the big contract, you see everybody on TV, but you don't see all the work that goes into that. It's a grind. And a lot of people don't see that grind.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.

It's been a challenge for me my whole life in that my insides don't necessarily match my outsides... People try to strike up a conversation with me about Dungeons & Dragons or comic books, and I'm like, 'I can't. I'm sorry.'

On the surface, I've created a good life. I've lived the American dream. But I am still an undocumented immigrant.

My dad didn't know that I had an eating disorder. He had no idea, so that was weird. I was in an interview and just said it accidentally. I called my dad because I remember thinking, 'My dad does not know that,' and he was surprised. I think he understood, though.

To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck--paddling, paddling, paddling.

Honestly, a lot of people thought that I was on top of the world selling so many millions of records, and that this is the life that everybody would want, but I never got to enjoy any of my success.