William Faulkner Quotes - Page 6

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• 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

  25 Copy quote

• No man can write who is not first a humanitarian

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Men, Firsts

  1957 In Time, 25 Feb.

  10 Copy quote

• Women ... to them any wedding is better than no wedding and a big wedding with a villain preferable to a small one with a saint.

  William Faulkner

  Women, Saint, Villain

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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  21 Copy quote

• No one individual can tell the truth.

  William Faulkner

  Telling The Truth, Individual

  6 Copy quote

• Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?

  William Faulkner

  Shapes, Flesh, Bones

  William Faulkner (2011). “Selected Short Stories”, p.275, Modern Library

  6 Copy quote

• The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

  William Faulkner

  Life, Wall, Moving

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

  22 Copy quote

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

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Thinking, Knows

  15 Copy quote

• The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on.

  William Faulkner

  War, Self, Enemy

  4 Copy quote

• I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Language Words, Joy

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.296, Modern Library

  5 Copy quote

• The Swiss are not a people so much as a neat, clean, quite solvent business.

  William Faulkner

  People, Clean, Swiss

  4 Copy quote

• The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.

  William Faulkner

  Heartbreak, Lost Love, Forever

  William Faulkner (2014). “Soldier's Pay”, p.319, Random House

  10 Copy quote

• Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing.

  William Faulkner

  Believe, Eye, Men

  "Light in August" by William Faulkner, (Ch. 2), 1932.

  6 Copy quote

• The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

  William Faulkner

  Hope, Writing, Heart

  Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

  7 Copy quote

• Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice.

  William Faulkner

  Sacrifice, Curiosity, Mistress

  William Faulkner (2011). “Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion”, p.969, Modern Library

  5 Copy quote

• I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

  William Faulkner

  Hot, Earth, Blind

  William Faulkner (1964). “As I Lay Dying”, GoodBook Classics

  17 Copy quote

• I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.

  William Faulkner

  Music, Mean, Trying

  13 Copy quote

• I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o'clock every day.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiration, Writing, Clock

  5 Copy quote

• Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.

  William Faulkner

  Believe, Men, Evil

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.105, Modern Library

  8 Copy quote

• ...It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Needs, Seems

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

  4 Copy quote

• ...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

  William Faulkner

  Long, Reason, Ready

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

  29 Copy quote

• Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall - Kilroy was here - that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see.

  William Faulkner

  Life, Success, Wall

  Quoted in Faulkner in the University, ed. Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner (1959)

  11 Copy quote

• A man. All men. He will pass up a hundred chances to do good for one chance to meddle where meddling is not wanted. He will overlook and fail to see chances, opportunities, for riches and fame and welldoing, and even sometimes for evil. But he won't fail to see a chance to meddle.

  William Faulkner

  Opportunity, Men, Evil

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

  18 Copy quote

• It feels almost soft, like something to be caressed. Only gold feels that way.

  William Faulkner

  Gold, Way, Feels

  4 Copy quote

• Menfolks listens to somebody because of what he says. Women don't. They don't care what he said. They listens because of what he is.

  William Faulkner

  Care, Said, Don't Care

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