William Faulkner Quotes - Page 10

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• The whiskey died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene.

  William Faulkner

  Night, Whiskey, Scene

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

  6 Copy quote

• He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....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

  Pride, Talking, Long

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

  14 Copy quote

• They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.

  William Faulkner

  Voice, People, Desire

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.117, Modern Library

  19 Copy quote

• An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

  William Faulkner

  Artist, Done, Stealing

  9 Copy quote

• Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.

  William Faulkner

  Art, History, Entertainment

  11 Copy quote

• A man never gets anywhere if facts and his ledgers don't square.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Squares, Facts

  William Faulkner (1966). “The Sound and the Fury”

  4 Copy quote

• What's wrong with this world is, it's not finished yet. It is not completed to that point where man can put his final signature to the job and say, "It is finished. We made it, and it works.

  William Faulkner

  Jobs, Men, Signatures

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.135, Modern Library

  5 Copy quote

• You like orchids?... Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.

  William Faulkner

  Sleep, Men, Orchids

  66 Copy quote

• A writer strives to express a universal truth in the way that rings the most bells in the shortest amount of time.

  William Faulkner

  Bells, Way, Strive

  6 Copy quote

• You don't dare think whole even to yourself the entirety of a dear hope or wish let alone a desperate one else you yourself have doomed it.

  William Faulkner

  Thinking, Wish, Desperate

  4 Copy quote

• There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality.

  William Faulkner

  Reality, Rocks, Maelstrom

  William Faulkner, Noel Polk (1987). “Absalom, Absalom!, typescript setting copy and miscellaneous material”, Facsimiles-Garl

  26 Copy quote

• 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, Ideas, Fiction

  6 Copy quote

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

  William Faulkner

  Poetry, Heaven, Earth

  4 Copy quote

• When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.

  William Faulkner

  Selfish, Blow, Thinking

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

  4 Copy quote

• any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man

  William Faulkner

  Men, Dead Man

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

  7 Copy quote

• A gentleman can live through anything.

  William Faulkner

  Courage, Gentleman

  William Faulkner (1999). “Novels, 1957-1962”

  8 Copy quote

• In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sad about anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn't it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That's why that's sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it.

  William Faulkner

  Father, Lying, Believe

  William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.48, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 Copy quote

• Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.

  William Faulkner

  World, Los Angeles, Plastic

  8 Copy quote

• ...thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Men, Thinking

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

  4 Copy quote

• If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Dostoyevsky, Written

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

  11 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as a bad whisky. Some whiskies just happen to be better than others.

  William Faulkner

  Drinking, Scotch, Whiskey

  20 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

• 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

  Talking, People, One Day

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

  5 Copy quote

• They will endure. They are better than we are. Stronger than we are. Their vices are vices aped from white men or that white men and bondage have taught them: improvidence and intemperance and evasion-not laziness: evasion: of what white men had set them to, not for their aggrandizement or even comfort but his own.

  William Faulkner

  Men, White Man, Justice

  The Bear pt. 4 (1932)

  7 Copy quote

• When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.

  William Faulkner

  Martini, Bigger, Feels

  16 Copy quote

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