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William Faulkner Quotes - Page 10

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It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless.

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless.

William Faulkner
Ambition, Leaving, Individual
William Faulkner, Joseph Leo Blotner (1978). “Selected letters of William Faulkner”, Vintage

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

William Faulkner
Art, History, Entertainment

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

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

William Faulkner
Poetry, Heaven, Earth

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

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

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

The past isn't over. It isn't even past.

William Faulkner
Past, Over It
"Requiem for a Nun". Book by William Faulkner, 1951.

It seems impossible for a man to learn the value of money without first having to learn to waste it.

William Faulkner
Men, Waste, Firsts
William Faulkner (1985). “Light in August”, Vintage

A gentleman can live through anything.

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

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

It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

William Faulkner
Men, Rocks, Talking
Speech Accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature, originally delivered December 10, 1950 in Stockholm Sweden

...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

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)

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”

There were many things I could do for two or three days and earn enough money to live on for the rest of the month. By temperament I'm a vagabond and a tramp.

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

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.

William Faulkner
Mother, Dream, Art
In Paris Review Spring 1956, p. 30

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

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.

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

People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can't know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do -after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world's anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.

William Faulkner
Strong, Children, Men
1956 Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.

William Faulkner
Hate, Envy, Bird
1956 Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books.

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

All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't.

William Faulkner
Dream, Believe, Writing
1956 On his generation of writers. Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

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

I'm inclined to think that a military background wouldn't hurt anyone.

William Faulkner
Hurt, Military, Thinking
William Faulkner, Joseph L. Fant, Robert Paul Ashley (1964). “Faulkner at West Point”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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