Time & Perspective Quote by Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh is selling a version of ambition that doesn’t perform for the crowd. The line opens with a disarming admission - “I guess I didn’t feel confident enough” - the kind of half-shrug that makes insecurity sound like a reasonable production choice. In an industry built on public striving, he frames his early career not as a lack of drive but as a refusal to audition his uncertainty in front of everyone else.

“Toil in obscurity” is the key phrase: it’s blue-collar language applied to artistic development, and it quietly rejects the myth of the overnight prodigy. He isn’t romanticizing suffering; he’s describing a deliberate incubation period, where the work is allowed to be bad, private, and purely educational. That’s the subtext: obscurity as protection. Not from failure itself, but from failure becoming a brand before you’ve even figured out what you’re trying to say.

The most revealing clause is the last one - “not knowing what that would be.” For a director known for restless experimentation (jumping between studio films, indies, genre exercises, formal tricks), this is practically a mission statement. He’s arguing that the point of early projects isn’t to declare your identity; it’s to discover it. In today’s culture of constant self-narration and strategic visibility, Soderbergh’s modesty reads almost radical: a reminder that “finding your voice” often happens offstage, when nobody is watching, and when you’re not yet sure what success is supposed to look like.