William Faulkner Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

  William Faulkner

  Mistake, Believe, Writing

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

• The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Artist, Solitude

• Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Epic, Study

• A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Two, Imagination

• Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

  William Faulkner

  Writing

• A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

  William Faulkner

  Teaching, Writing, Love And Honor

  Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

• I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Trying, Novelists

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

• the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Heart, Agony

  Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

• It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, Writing, Character

  William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.101, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be-curiosity-to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Thinking, Men

• I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Thinking, Knows

• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, Writing, May

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

• The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Writing, Artist

• My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

  William Faulkner

  Drinking, Writing, Scotch Whisky

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

• In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Darling

• When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Ideas, Simplicity

• A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Fiction, Telling The Truth

• The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself

  William Faulkner

  Heart, Writing, Conflict

• No man can write who is not first a humanitarian

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Men, Firsts

  1957 In Time, 25 Feb.

• If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Dostoyevsky, Written

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

• The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don't.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Artist, Editors

• The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.

  William Faulkner

  Art, Powerful, Writing

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

• All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't.

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Believe, Writing

  1956 On his generation of writers. Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

• Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.

  William Faulkner

  Reading, Writing, Busy

• It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.

  William Faulkner

  Morning, Writing, Men

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