William Faulkner Quotes - Page 13

Quotes about:

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

• The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself, after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times.

  William Faulkner

  Profound, House, Pulse

  William Faulkner “The Sound and the Fury”, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

• I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Men, Long

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• You can't. You just have to.

  William Faulkner

  William Faulkner (2011). “Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner”, p.19, Vintage

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• I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue.

  William Faulkner

  People, Tongue, Consistent

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.118, Modern Library

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• People ... have tried to evoke God or devil to justify them in what their glands insisted upon.

  William Faulkner

  People, Devil, Evoke

  William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

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• Living is one constant and perpetual instant when the arras-veil before what-is-to-be hangs docile and even glad to the lightest naked thrust if we had dared, were brave enough (not wise enough: no wisdom needed here) to make the rending gash.

  William Faulkner

  Life, Wise, Brave

  William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The air brightened, the running shadow patches were now the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he was carrying ancient wounds.

  William Faulkner

  Running, Air, Shadow

  William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.150, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

• Thank God you can flee, can escape from that massy five-foot-thick maggot-cheesy solidarity which overlays the earth, in which men and women in couples are ranked like ninepins.

  William Faulkner

  Couple, Divorce, Men

  William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

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• Gough never pretended to perfection or to sainthood - well, hardly ever. Although when he set off the metal detector at airport security, he would blame his aura.

  William Faulkner

  Memorable, Airports, Perfection

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• I've got to feel the pencil and see the words at the end of the pencil.

  William Faulkner

  Ends, Feels, Pencils

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• I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

  William Faulkner

  Hate, Dark, Air

  William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

  9 Copy quote

• Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both:---touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am's private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone's to take in any any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement. But let flesh touch with flesh, and watch the fall of all the eggshell shibboleth of caste and color too.

  William Faulkner

  Fall, Cutting, Color

  "Daughter of the Swan: Love and Knowledge in Eudora Welty's Fiction". Book by Rosa Coldfield (p. 32), 1994.

  7 Copy quote

• She wouldn't say what we both knew. 'The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it? But you know it is true now. I can almost tell you the day when you knew it is true. Why won't you say it, even to yourself?' She will not say it.

  William Faulkner

  Reason, Knows, I Can

  William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck (1971). “William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck”

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• …I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.

  William Faulkner

  Lying, Thinking, Light

  William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.90, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.

  William Faulkner

  Regret, Father, Littles

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.79, Modern Library

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• Marriage is long enough to have plenty of room for time behind it.

  William Faulkner

  Marriage, Long, Rooms

  William Faulkner (2011). “A Fable”, p.329, Vintage

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• Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.

  William Faulkner

  Stars, Boxes, Stills

  William Faulkner “The Sound and the Fury”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

  William Faulkner

  Crazy, Men, Thinking

  William Faulkner (1955). “Faulkner's county: tales of Yoknapatawpha county”

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• When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...

  William Faulkner

  Children, Ignorance, Mean

  "The Reivers". Book by William Faulkner, 1962.

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• 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

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• 'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Men, Talking

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• She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.

  William Faulkner

  Surrender, Seventeen

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

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• When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Long, Done

  William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck (1971). “William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck”

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