William Faulkner Quotes

• I decline to accept the end of man.

  William Faulkner

  Men  

  Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

  2976

• In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world.

  William Faulkner

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

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• My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

  William Faulkner

  Writing  

  5057

• True poetry is not of earth, 'T is more of Heaven by its birth.

  William Faulkner

  2848

• Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

  William Faulkner

  4826

• 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

  Men  

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

  3791

• With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.

  William Faulkner

  Writing  

  2499

• Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.

  William Faulkner

  William Faulkner (2006). “Novels, 1926-1929”

  2870

• You're looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider.

  William Faulkner

  689

• That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.

  William Faulkner

  William Faulkner (1954). “The Best of Faulkner”

  2008

• 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

  Men  

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

  674

• Caddy smelled like trees.

  William Faulkner

  William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.321, W. W. Norton & Company

  3710

• I never promise a woman anything nor let her know what I'm going to give her. That's the only way to manage them. Always keep them guessing. If you cant think of any other way to surprise them, give them a bust in the jaw.

  William Faulkner

  William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.101, W. W. Norton & Company

  637

• Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

  William Faulkner

  Writing  

  3492

• One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat...nor make love for eight hours...

  William Faulkner

  Men  

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

  1056

• I listen to the voices.

  William Faulkner

  3740

• So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

  William Faulkner

  226

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

  William Faulkner

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

  1478

• ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.

  William Faulkner

  Men  

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

  4911

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

  William Faulkner

  Writing  

  1664

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

  William Faulkner

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

  2915

• Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich.

  William Faulkner

  594

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

  William Faulkner

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

  5098

• Wonder. Go on and wonder.

  William Faulkner

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

  2670

• It has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well and if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it.

  William Faulkner

  2179

• a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he'd like to escape from living folks. But it's the dead folks that do him the damage. It's the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from.

  William Faulkner

  Men  

  William Faulkner (1985). “Light in August”, Vintage

  2115

• 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

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

  2993

• One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

  William Faulkner

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

  663

• The most important thing is insight, that is to be - curious - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.

  William Faulkner

  Men  

  3895

• 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

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

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