What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.

Scott Adsit

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.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

You Thing Thin

I have a combination of self-love and self-loathing, just like most people.

Amy Landecker

Love Us Thing

Being a parent has taught me a lot of things already, you know, though it's only been a year and half, and has made me address parts of myself that I would otherwise live in comfortable denial of, or you know and - you know, for instance, my self-loathing.

Ani DiFranco

Art You Year

Every single time I step into the studio, I say, 'Can I still do this? Do I still have it? Have I ever had it?' I suppose there's a good amount of self-loathing that goes into any form of artisanship.

Ben Harper

Time Good Art

Growing up, I was a self-loathing Igor who carried the queen's books. My job was to be the sarcastic sherpa, quietly providing the farce and adoration, then becoming part of the wall when cued.

Betty Gilpin

Car Art Wing

When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide.

Byron Katie

Age Wit UN

You either listen to the naysayers and fall into the pit of self-loathing, or you stay on the path and move forward.

Chris Pine

War You Thing

I grew up very self-loathing. I was a phobic. I had anxiety. I had panic attacks.

Dane Cook

Very Up Thing

With 'Free Agent Nation,' I was figuring out how to write a book along with writing the book. Now I think I've kind of, sort of figured out how to write a book a little bit better. But the process remains not that different - slow; laborious; tiny, incremental progress each day, punctuated by feelings of despair and self-loathing.

Daniel H. Pink

Men Age Writing

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

David Duchovny

Men Writer Write

I still enjoy my life, and I feel like I've achieved enough things that if I never did anything again, I'd feel confident that I'd still have made my mark in some way. But maybe the self-loathing bit is the element that makes you strive for more. Makes you strive to be better.

David Walliams

Men Life You

It's really hard to foster self-love; it really is. I think a lot of people who claim that they do have a definite lack of self-loathing are either lying or just in a place that I don't relate to.

Devin Townsend

Love Yin Who

Narcissism is not about self love. It's a clinical trait that belies a deep sense of emptiness, low self-esteem, emotional detachment, self-loathing, extreme problems with intimacy.

Drew Pinsky

Men Love Wit

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I'm learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, 'I can't go to Kmart. I can't take my kids to the haunted house.'

Eminem

Positive Learning Art

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer's block... Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.

Eminem

Music Art Writer

Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.

Eminem

Music Art Us

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.

Ethan Hawke

Society Wood Woo

There is no question you get pumped up by the recognition. Then a self-loathing sets in when you realise you're enjoying it.

George C. Scott

You Yin Up

What is most difficult is when the large part of me that is a narcissist grows weary and is overtaken by the self-loathing part that always lurks in the shadows waiting for an opportunity to shine.

Greg Fitzsimmons

Art Weary Wear

How often are the perpetrators of hate-crimes discovered to be self-loathing? Valued individuals do not strike out against strangers.

Harvey Fierstein

Pet Anger Valued

I'm very motivated by the occasional creative payoff that comes when something goes really well, be it a song, a recording or performance. The payoff is enormous - when you get it. Most of the time, though, I'm filled with self-loathing and general frustration at the limitations I have as a musician.

Ian Anderson

The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that's how self-loathing is made palatable.

James Gray

Most novelists I know went through a period of intense self-examination and self-loathing after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I certainly did.

Jay McInerney

Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence.

Jeanette Winterson

The most moving parts of 'Real American' come when Lythcott-Haims stares unflinchingly at her own self-loathing, writing about the racist encounters of her childhood that convinced her from a young age that there was something inherently wrong with being black.

Jenna Wortham

There's a mixture of pride and self-loathing in Jewish female comedians that I've always admired and wanted to bring into Jinkx.

Jinkx Monsoon

I'm a self-loathing slide player. Some people like the way I play slide - I hate it.

Joe Bonamassa

My last album as J. Tillman, 'Singing Ax,' that was really a premeditated death rattle of the aesthetic precedent I had set. I realized I wasn't creating spontaneously; I was enforcing all these parameters. I was too self-loathing or something, and there was this obvious dissonance between my conversational voice and creative voice.

Josh Tillman

Even after he was gone, I still loved my father. I looked Norwegian, like him, with a long face, strong jaw, thin mouth, and flashing eyes. And, like him, I was verbal, easygoing, and low-key on the surface, and, deep down, proud, socially paranoid, full of self-loathing, and prone to rage at injustice.

Kate Christensen

I have a very healthy dose of self-loathing. But I think we all have a past of being whatever our story was, of feeling not good enough. It can propel you to work harder and do more, but it can also be a tremendous trap, and you can't see beyond it.

Kim Cattrall

I am not racked with self-loathing. Some issues of guilt and shame, but I'm a pretty good guy.

Marcus Brigstocke

Washington has always had a pretty healthy amount of self-loathing.

Mark Leibovich

I think many people expend a tremendous amount of energy on self-loathing and self-flagellation as well as getting caught in a vicious cycle of dieting and gaining the weight back.

Marti Noxon

I do want to say the process of writing a novel is riddled with self-doubt and self-loathing.

Meg Wolitzer

I'm self-loathing, introverted, and neurotic.

Megan Fox

Self-loathing doesn't keep me from being happy. But that doesn't mean I don't struggle.

Megan Fox

I was enamored of New York City intellectual life and was really into Philip Roth because I was raised by self-loathing Midwesterners who were from southern Illinois, who felt like fish out of water when they came to the East Coast when I was a kid.

Meghan Daum

Social media, despite its reputation as the ultimate agent of self-promotion, actually feeds on self-loathing.

Meghan Daum

I don't think closeted homosexual morticians have the market cornered on self-loathing or sense of shame.

Michael C. Hall

Like, your body has to get used to being in front of people. Like - and you have to be like - you have to be kind of a ham, you know? Like, the thing about writers is they're generally self - comedy writers - self-loathing, sort of play small. And as a, like, performer, you have to think like a comedy writer but act like a performer.

Neal Brennan

I had such intense self-loathing for so long.

Olly Alexander

There was a warm and encouraging environment at home. My self-loathing and neuroticism are not because of my upbringing.

Raphael Bob-Waksberg

We joke a lot about how, in Hollywood, the writer is one step below the doormat. That's not self-loathing. That's true!

Robert Ben Garant

I'm the worst night owl, because I'm a self-loathing night owl who thinks, 'No, I should be getting up early.' It feels unproductive. I must get over that.

Ronny Chieng

Like a lot of people, I've got a self-loathing streak that's alive and well. It acts as a de facto engine when I'm working, but it also has its extraordinary pitfalls, too.

Ryan Reynolds

What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.

Scott Adsit

The truth is, I've always been wracked with self-loathing and terrible, paralysing depression.

Shirley Manson

My capacity as a monk was to passionately believe utter nonsense, and when you're an actor you have to do the same thing. Also, Christianity used to have a lot to do with self-loathing and an acceptance of criticism and things like that which is terribly important for actors.

Tom Baker

'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.

Trent Reznor

A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness, even self-loathing. If no jeans fit, you'll feel uncomfortable or inferior. If no housing developments reflect your taste for unique architecture, you'll write screeds against philistine mass culture.

Virginia Postrel