Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by William Faulkner

Quote by William Faulkner

Author

William Faulkner
William Faulkner

William Faulkner, an American writer born on September 25, 1897, and died on July 6, 1962. Known for his unique narrative techniques and profound descriptions of Southern society and history, Faulkner is considered one of the great novelists of the 20th century. more

You May Also Like

“We can ask for forgiveness, from a god, from a friend, a lover, even ourselves. We can ask for forgiveness from all of the people we’ve wronged, but we can never get back the one thing we’re truly hoping to find when we asked: our innocence—the person we were before that piece of us was taken, ripped away and shattered at our feet, leaving us to learn how to pick ourselves back up and move past it.”

“The reason why you doubt yourself so much is that you have never seen yourself in action. You have never seen yourself breaking limits. You have never seen yourself standing in the spotlight and getting cheered by the audience.”

“In graduate school, early on, I once overheard a classmate talking in her office as I walked by. She didn't know I was there. She was gossiping about me to a group of our classmates & said I was the affirmative-action student...Rationally, I know it was absurd, but hearing how she & maybe others saw me hurt real bad...I stopped joking about being a slacker. I tripled the number of projects I was involved with. I was excellent most of the time. I fell short some of the time. I made sure I got good grades. I made sure my comprehensive exams were solid. I wrote conference proposals & had them accepted. I published. I designed an overly ambitious research project for my dissertation that kind of made me want to die. No matter what I did, I heard that girl, that girl who had accomplished a fraction of a fraction of what I had, telling a group of our peers I was the one who did not deserve to be in our program.”

“Whenever I find myself doubting whether I can face another battle, I simply remember the doubts I had in the past and how difficult the future battles seemed to be. Then, I look to where I am now and see everything I’ve faced, all the battles I won. All of them had a common element: I overcame fear rather than it overcoming me. Self-doubt, yeah, maybe, but I refuse to let that stop me. How about you do the same?”