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William Faulkner Quotes - Page 13

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The air brightened, the running shadow patches were now the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he was

The air brightened, the running shadow patches were now the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he was carrying ancient wounds.

William Faulkner
Running, Air, Shadow
William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.150, W. W. Norton & Company

Thank God you can flee, can escape from that massy five-foot-thick maggot-cheesy solidarity which overlays the earth, in which men and women in couples are ranked like ninepins.

William Faulkner
Couple, Divorce, Men
William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

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

Gough never pretended to perfection or to sainthood - well, hardly ever. Although when he set off the metal detector at airport security, he would blame his aura.

William Faulkner
Memorable, Airports, Perfection

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

William Faulkner
Writing, Ideas, Simplicity

I've got to feel the pencil and see the words at the end of the pencil.

William Faulkner
Ends, Feels, Pencils

I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

William Faulkner
Hate, Dark, Air
William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both:---touch and touch of that which is the citadel of the central I-Am's private own: not spirit, soul; the liquorish and ungirdled mind is anyone's to take in any any darkened hallway of this earthly tenement. But let flesh touch with flesh, and watch the fall of all the eggshell shibboleth of caste and color too.

William Faulkner
Fall, Cutting, Color
"Daughter of the Swan: Love and Knowledge in Eudora Welty's Fiction". Book by Rosa Coldfield (p. 32), 1994.

She wouldn't say what we both knew. 'The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it? But you know it is true now. I can almost tell you the day when you knew it is true. Why won't you say it, even to yourself?' She will not say it.

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

…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.

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

'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

William Faulkner
Writing, Men, Talking

When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...

William Faulkner
Children, Ignorance, Mean
"The Reivers". Book by William Faulkner, 1962.

She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.

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

When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.

William Faulkner
Book, Dark, Light
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.169, Modern Library

The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country. He's like a fine dog. People like him around, but he's of no use.

William Faulkner
Country, Dog, Art
William Faulkner, Paul Gardner, Eric Mottram (1976). “A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner”

Marriage is long enough to have plenty of room for time behind it.

William Faulkner
Marriage, Long, Rooms
William Faulkner (2011). “A Fable”, p.329, Vintage

Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.

William Faulkner
Color, Heaven, Cottages
William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

William Faulkner
Crazy, Men, Thinking
William Faulkner (1955). “Faulkner's county: tales of Yoknapatawpha county”

It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.

William Faulkner
Regret, Father, Littles
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.79, Modern Library

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.

William Faulkner
Writing, Thinking, People

When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.

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

Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.

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

He is thinking quietly: I should not have got out of the habit of prayer.

William Faulkner
Prayer, Thinking, Habit
William Faulkner (1985). “Light in August”, Vintage

The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He's supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn't part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation.

William Faulkner
Artist, Fabric, Littles

I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as when he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping. And like he would be kind of proud of whatever come up to make the moving or the setting still look hard. He set there on the wagon hunched up, blinking, listening to us tell about how quick the bridge went and how high the water was, and I be durn if he didn't act like he was proud of it, like he had made the river rise himself.

William Faulkner
Hate, Moving, Men
William Faulkner (1946). “The Sound and the Fury: And As I Lay Dying”, New York : The Modern library

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