William Faulkner Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• Pouring out liquor is like burning books.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Burning, Pouring

• The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Men, Old Friends

• Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

  William Faulkner

  Book

  William Faulkner (1972). “Light in August”, Vintage

• The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, 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.

  William Faulkner

  Mother, Dream, Art

  In Paris Review Spring 1956, p. 30

• ...how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Profound, Turns

  William Faulkner (1972). “Light in August”, Vintage

• It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Understanding, Literature

  "Faulkner Without Fanfare". Esquire Magazine, July 1963.

• When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Dark, Light

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.169, Modern Library

• ...thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Men, Thinking

  William Faulkner (1972). “Light in August”, Vintage

• If there was anything at all in the Book, anything of hope and peace for His blind and bewildered spawn which He had chosen above all others to offer immortality, THOU SHALT NOT KILL must be it.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Blind, Immortality

  William Faulkner (2012). “A Rose for Emily and Other Stories: A Rose for Emily; The Hound; Turn About; That Evening Sun; Dry September; Delta Autumn; Barn Burning; An Odor of Verbena”, p.164, Random House

• What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Should, Obituary

• It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books. [] It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: he made the books and he died.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Ambition, Effort

  William Faulkner, Joseph Leo Blotner (1978). “Selected letters of William Faulkner”, Vintage

• I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Reading, Men

  William Faulkner, Noel Polk (1987). “Absalom, Absalom!, typescript setting copy and miscellaneous material”, Facsimiles-Garl

• Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Pride, Honor

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin