William Faulkner Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• The Swiss are not a people so much as a neat, clean, quite solvent business.

  William Faulkner

  People, Clean, Swiss

  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

• 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

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

  William Faulkner

  People

  7 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Order, Wells

  10 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

• 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

• Women ... to them any wedding is better than no wedding and a big wedding with a villain preferable to a small one with a saint.

  William Faulkner

  Women, Saint, Villain

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

  9 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• ...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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

  Running, Artist, Blood

  5 Copy quote

• The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

  William Faulkner

  Hope, Writing, Heart

  Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

  7 Copy quote

• It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.

  William Faulkner

  Heart, Men, Privilege

  William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.46, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  21 Copy quote

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