Michael K. Williams Quotes

I always keep my head down, working, doing things, moving forward. That's what I've done all my life. Then you stop and realize what you've done.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'

The biggest thing is I watch myself: What I need to improve on, what I can do different.

There was a lot of reflection - I know that - wondering, 'What in the hell am I doing?' But it paid off.

I didn't get a lot of questions asked earlier in my career, I guess. But I've always been the same guy, more or less.

I've criticized myself over the years.

When I come home, I always look in the mirror and I want to see where I could do better, where I can improve.

Something good happens or something bad, I think, 'What can I do better? What didn't I do this year?'

I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron.... I should have been able to do better.

Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing.

Study your strengths; then decide how hard you want to work

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place...The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which made him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.

Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you've done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I'll be damned, I did this today. It doesn't matter how good it is, or how bad-you did it. At the end of the week you'll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I'll be damned, it's been a good year.

I always write to understand my place in the world. I can see myself and my life unfold on the page, and I can understand my strengths, my weaknesses - I can see where I need to step up a bit.

I don't feel like I've nearly got to the place where I'm ready to even slow down.

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me, the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating.

Some people go to bed at night thinking, 'That was a good day.' I am one of those who worries and asks, 'How did I screw up today?'

I'm not good at watching myself.

I often sit back and think, I wish I'd done that, and find out later that I already have.

For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?

When you get to be a 45-year-old man, you start to realize: 'I know who I am, and I know who I'm not. I know my shortcomings, I know my strengths; maybe some of my shortcomings are my strengths.' You start to face yourself as you truly are.

I'm my worst critic, and I like the fact that I can listen to myself now and make fun of myself, listen, make changes - 'Oh, man, that's messed up. Okay, I need to work on that; I need to work on this.'

I don't know how to sit outside myself and test against a hypothetical self who stayed home.

I go on the Internet and look at old pictures of myself, because it is the best reminder of how far I have come and where I do not want to be.