William Faulkner Quotes - Page 5

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• Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

  William Faulkner

  Running, Gun, Worry

  28 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

• Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Giving, Littles

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

  10 Copy quote

• The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.

  William Faulkner

  Space, Two, Trying

  1959 Speech to UNESCO Commission, in the NewYork Times, 3 Oct.

  32 Copy quote

• I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

  William Faulkner

  Butterfly, Light, Air

  William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.90, W. W. Norton & Company

  19 Copy quote

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

  William Faulkner

  Stupid, Silence, Stupidity

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

  21 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

• Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.

  William Faulkner

  Fighting, Men, Sun

  William Faulkner (2011). “Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner”, p.85, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

  William Faulkner

  Military, Practice, Liberty

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.151, Modern Library

  21 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

• Try to be better than yourself.

  William Faulkner

  Trying

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

  10 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

• No man can write who is not first a humanitarian

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Men, Firsts

  1957 In Time, 25 Feb.

  10 Copy quote

• She was the captain of her soul

  William Faulkner

  Soul, Captains

  14 Copy quote

• God created man and He created the world for him to live in and I reckon He created the kind of world He would have wanted to live in if He had been a man--the ground to walk on, the big woods, the trees and the water, and the game to live in it. And maybe He didn't put the desire to hunt and kill game in man but I reckon He knew it was going to be there, that man was going to teach it to himself, since he wasn't quite God himself yet.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Games, Water

  William Faulkner (2012). “A Rose for Emily and Other Stories: A Rose for Emily; The Hound; Turn About; That Evening Sun; Dry September; Delta Autumn; Barn Burning; An Odor of Verbena”, p.119, Random House

  6 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 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

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

  William Faulkner

  Dream, Writing, Artist

  35 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

• And sure enough, even waiting will end...if you can just wait long enough.

  William Faulkner

  Patience, Long, Waiting

  9 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 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

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