Quotes About Determination

As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

it takes an awful lot of character to quit anything when you are losing

When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.

I can stand on my own feet; I don't need any man's mahogany desk to prop me up

I can't do nothing. Just put it off. And that don't do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain't no more than mine.

now i can get them teeth

Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency . . . to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies.

He puts his shoes on, stomping into them, like he does everything, like he is hoping all the time he really cant do it and can quit trying to.

But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.

At least this will be my chance to find out if I am what I think I am or if I just hope; if I am going to do what I have taught myself is right or if I am just going to wish I were.

When they get done sending you to Parchman you'll have plenty of time between working cotton and corn you aint going to get no third and fourth of even, to study it. They looked at one another. Yes sir, George said. 'Especially wid you there to help me worry hit out.

I love, I will accept no substitute; ...; if happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

I reckon a man in a tight might let Bill Varner patch him up like a mule, but I be damned if the man that'd let Anse Bundren treat him with raw cement aint got more spare legs than I have.

My gad, one of them, warrant officer pilot, captain and M. C. in turn said to me once; if you can treat a crate that way, why do you want to fly at all?

I've done what I could; a man that can live as lone as I have and not know when to quit is a fool.

because it takes an awful lot of character to quit anything when you are losing

Just like folks. Put off as long as she could having to be brave, knowing all the time that sooner or later she would have to be brave once so she could keep on calling herself a dog, and knowing beforehand what was going to happen when she done it.

Well, Kernel, they kilt us but they ain't whupped us yit, air they?

Now and then you meet a man that ain't ever been afraid, not even of himself." –William Faulkner

She forced herself once more to think of nothing, to keep her consciousness immersed, as a little dog that one keeps under water until he has stopped struggling

The writers I know seem constitutionally unable to allow themselves to be discouraged by failure.

The painters could be identified by dirty fingernails; the writers by conversation in labored monosyllables and aggressive vulgarities which disguised their minds.

No move is the wrong move, What? Sometimes any move at all is better than nothin. If you're right, you're one up. If you're wrong you start over. This sittin and waiting for somebody else to make up their mind is for the God-damned birds. You have to take control of your own life.

Somewhere, deep within her, surfaces a tiny clockwork submarine. There are times when you can only take the next step. And then another.