William Faulkner Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• 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

• No one individual can tell the truth.

  William Faulkner

  Telling The Truth, Individual

  6 Copy quote

• Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

  William Faulkner

  Fun, Grief, Statistics

  If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem "The Wild Palms" (1939)

  13 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

• She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do.

  William Faulkner

  People

  7 Copy quote

• How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

  William Faulkner

  Rain, Home, Thinking

  William Faulkner (1955). “Faulkner's county: tales of Yoknapatawpha county”

  17 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

• When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.

  William Faulkner

  Running, Horse, Writing

  15 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

• You have to write badly in order to write well.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Order, Wells

  10 Copy quote

• It's terrible to be young. It's terrible. Terrible

  William Faulkner

  Young, Terrible, Be Young

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

  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

• We will have to choose not between color nor race nor religion nor between East and West either, but simply between being slaves and being free. And we will have to choose completely and for good; the time is already past now when we can choose a little of each, a little of both. We can choose a state of slavedom, and if we are powerful enough to be among the top two or three or ten, we can have a certain amount of license - until someone more powerful rises and has us machine-gunned against a cellar wall.

  William Faulkner

  Wisdom, Wall, Powerful

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.150, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

• By artist I mean of course everyone who has tried to create something which was not here before him, with no other tools and material than the uncommer-ciable ones of the human spirit.

  William Faulkner

  Mean, Artist, Tools

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.143, Modern Library

  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

• 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

• 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

• When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Ideas, Simplicity

  7 Copy quote

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

  William Faulkner

  Pride, Honor, Way

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

  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

  9 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

• I think that-that anyone, the painter, the musician, the writer works in a-a kind of an-an insane fury. He's demon-driven. He can get up feeling rotten, with a hangover, or with-with actual pain, and-and if he gets to work, the first thing he knows, he don't remember that pain, that hangover-he's too busy.

  William Faulkner

  Pain, Hangover, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.

  William Faulkner

  Strange, Folly, Monotonous

  William Faulkner (2011). “Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner”, p.91, Vintage

  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

• The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.

  William Faulkner

  Reason, Knows

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

  7 Copy quote

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