Professional Inadequacy Quotes

The biggest insecurity I had was my singing. Even though I had sold 70 million records, there was this feeling like, I'm not good at this.

Saroj Kumar is plagued with insecurity about how he can survive in the industry, what with new, better looking actors coming up, and experimental films taking over his once popular box-office success formulas.

I was a pretty terrible lawyer. A really, really terrible lawyer.

Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.

It's always at the back of my mind that acting might come to an end for me when Harry Potter finishes. I don't know if I'm good enough to have a long career. I've got a bit of an inferiority complex about my acting. My self-esteem is quite low in that sense.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything.

I would be the worst biologist in the world!

I flatter myself to even imagine I could have had a medical practice. There's no way. I'm not scientific or disciplined enough, lots of things.

The minute you get cast, you worry they've made the most terrible mistake. There's a really awkward stage between being hired and doing the job when it doesn't feel real.

To this day, I haven't felt like I've made it. I'm waiting for them to pull the rug out from under me. I kind of feel like George Plimpton; I'm just experiencing this whole business with the really talented people.

I was not a good teacher; I didn't have the sort of edge one should have on the students, so I decided to do something else.

I can't watch myself on screen without dying a little bit inside. And there are lots of moments when I think, 'What am I doing as an actor? I can't act!'

Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.

The more professionally successful you are, the more emotionally insecure you will be.

Within me, I knew I would never be a first-rate producer. I wasn't tough enough.

There's always an element of fear that you need to work a lot until people get sick and tired of you or finally figure out that you're a fraud after all!

I think where I feel the most vulnerable and anxious and sometimes insecure is when it comes to my work. It's arguably the thing that I care about the most.

Now, almost twenty years since my last job in book publishing, I know that there are far more socially inept people in book than in magazine publishing. At the time, however, I just didn't feel I was enough: smart enough, savvy enough, well read enough, educated enough, charming enough. Much of this was probably because I was very naive, and didn't really know how to behave in an office. This made me a terrible assistant, which in turn made me a terrible junior book editor.

It's so funny because all those years I was working, I basically always felt that whatever job I was doing would probably be the last one I would get. I really never thought that I stacked up with the other girls.

I made an awful mess of my first marriage. It was hard to live with me being me. I was so abnormal. I mean, most writers struggle. I hadn't struggled. I couldn't suddenly go down to the PEN Club and behave like a normal human being, because most of those guys were struggling to make a couple of thousand pounds a year.

As actors, you always have that moment thinking you've been absolutely terrible or a fraud.