William Faulkner Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• 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

  14 Copy quote

• She was the captain of her soul

  William Faulkner

  Soul, Captains

  14 Copy quote

• I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

  William Faulkner

  Courage, Integrity, Believe

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

  35 Copy quote

• They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

  William Faulkner

  Liars, Lying, Men

  William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

  53 Copy quote

• And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

  William Faulkner

  Liars, Lying, Men

  William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

  14 Copy quote

• Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the back either. Just refuse to bear them.

  William Faulkner

  Peace, Paper, Cash

  William Faulkner (1994). “Novels 1942-1954”

  14 Copy quote

• She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do.

  William Faulkner

  People

  7 Copy quote

• The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

  William Faulkner

  Mean, Men, Trying

  William Faulkner (1937). “Soldiers' Pay”

  12 Copy quote

• Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done. The writer's only responsibility is to his art.

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Art, Responsibility

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

  19 Copy quote

• You have to write badly in order to write well.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Order, Wells

  10 Copy quote

• Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

  William Faulkner

  Life, Time, Long

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.87, Modern Library

  71 Copy quote

• The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

  William Faulkner

  Poetry, Facts, Not Interested

  "The Town" by William Faulkner, (Ch. 5), 1957.

  11 Copy quote

• Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Victory, Despair

  The Sound and the Fury pt. 2 (1929)

  38 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Faulkner

  Two, Long, People

  28 Copy quote

• Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

  William Faulkner

  Fun, Grief, Statistics

  If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem "The Wild Palms" (1939)

  13 Copy quote

• It's terrible to be young. It's terrible. Terrible

  William Faulkner

  Young, Terrible, Be Young

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

  4 Copy quote

• . . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and---from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.

  William Faulkner

  Christian, Fall, Light

  4 Copy quote

• Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.

  William Faulkner

  Negative, Purity, States

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.116, Modern Library

  7 Copy quote

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

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Writing, Artist

  34 Copy quote

• It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.

  William Faulkner

  Funny, Work, Men

  18 Copy quote

• By artist I mean of course everyone who has tried to create something which was not here before him, with no other tools and material than the uncommer-ciable ones of the human spirit.

  William Faulkner

  Mean, Artist, Tools

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.143, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

• Necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor and pride.

  William Faulkner

  Pride, Honor, Way

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

  5 Copy quote

• I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.

  William Faulkner

  Thinking, White, People

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.87, Modern Library

  37 Copy quote

• You can't beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to.

  William Faulkner

  Wise, Women, Trying

  10 Copy quote

• You get born and you try this and you don't know why, only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way.

  William Faulkner

  Moving, People, Atheism

  45 Copy quote

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