"I went through all my twenties thinking that I wasn't good enough"
About this Quote
The subtext sits in the passive construction: “thinking that I wasn’t good enough” reads less like a private thought and more like a belief absorbed from the outside. For an actress who came up in an image economy - beauty pageant roots, casting rooms, magazine commentary, tabloid appetite - “good enough” is never a stable target. It shifts with the camera angle, the role, the weight, the mood of a producer. That vagueness is the point: it captures how self-doubt thrives when the criteria are both omnipresent and undefined.
Burke’s phrasing also does something quietly defiant. She doesn’t say her twenties were wasted; she says she lived them under a false evaluation. The implied second act is reclamation: if the belief was constructed, it can be dismantled. In a celebrity culture that loves neat redemption arcs, this lands because it’s anti-glamorous and specific - not “I struggled,” but “I spent ten years underestimating myself.” It’s the kind of honesty that reads less like branding and more like a scar you can still touch.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Burke, Delta. (2026, January 15). I went through all my twenties thinking that I wasn't good enough. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-went-through-all-my-twenties-thinking-that-i-143536/
Chicago Style
Burke, Delta. "I went through all my twenties thinking that I wasn't good enough." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-went-through-all-my-twenties-thinking-that-i-143536/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I went through all my twenties thinking that I wasn't good enough." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-went-through-all-my-twenties-thinking-that-i-143536/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.


