William Faulkner Quotes

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Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

William Faulkner

Truth, Honesty, Lying

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The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

William Faulkner

Drama, Taken, Past

366 Copy quote
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

William Faulkner

Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

369 Copy quote
Don't do what you can do - try what you can't do.

William Faulkner

Trying, Can Do

225 Copy quote
Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

William Faulkner

Life, Honesty, Now And Then

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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.

William Faulkner

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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

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Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.

William Faulkner

Long, Life Is, Process

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Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.

William Faulkner

Inspirational, Running, Dream

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Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid.

William Faulkner

Helping, Scared

William Faulkner (2011). “Big Woods: The Hunting Stories”, p.26, Vintage

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If a story is in you, it has to come out.

William Faulkner

Stories, Ifs

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If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green... If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't.

William Faulkner

Children, Blue, Color

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

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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

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To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

William Faulkner

Reality, World, Firsts

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Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

William Faulkner

Mistake, Errors, People

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

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Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

William Faulkner

Depression, Pain, Numbness

222 Copy quote
You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.

William Faulkner

Love, Faults, Virtue

87 Copy quote
No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

William Faulkner

Grief, Men, Vices

"Intruder in the Dust".

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He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

William Faulkner

Music, Sarcastic, Sarcasm

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Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.

William Faulkner

Thank You, Thanksgiving, Gratitude

"Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

William Faulkner

Beautiful, Women, Cat

Quoted in Reader's Digest, Mar. 1973

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It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.

William Faulkner

Yesterday, Tomorrow

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The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.

William Faulkner

Love, Inspirational, Wisdom

William Faulkner (2011). “Flags in the Dust: The complete text of Faulkner's third novel, which appeared in a cut version as Sartoris”, p.68, Vintage

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It's not when you realize that nothing can help you — religion, pride, anything — it's when you realize that you don't need any aid.

William Faulkner

Pride, Religion, Needs

"The Sound And The Fury".

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To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

William Faulkner

Life, Equality, Alaska

William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.101, Modern Library

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Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories. The past is never dead, it is not even past.

William Faulkner

Sweet, Memories, Past

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Born: September 25, 1897
Died: July 6, 1962
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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