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William Faulkner Quotes - Page 14

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You men,' she says. 'You durn men.

You men,' she says. 'You durn men.

William Faulkner
Men
Jack L. Capps, William Faulkner (1979). “Light in August: a concordance to the novel”

...and you don't even have to sleep alone, you don't even have to sleep at all; and so, all you have to do is show the stick to the dog now and then and say, 'Thank God for nothing.'

William Faulkner
Dog, Sleep, Thank God
"Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner".

It used to be I thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of Grandfather's desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room where it was.

William Faulkner
Death, Men, Thinking
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.172, Modern Library

Mississippi begins in a lobby of a Memphis, Tennessee hotel and extends south to the Gulf of Mexico

William Faulkner
Tennessee, Mexico, Memphis
William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.11, Modern Library

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique.

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

Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.

William Faulkner
Lonely, Grieving, Knowing
William Faulkner (1967). “Light in August”, Random House Inc

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.

William Faulkner
Dream, Possible And Impossible, Perfection
1956 On his generation of writers. Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly.

William Faulkner
Men, Lust, Proof
William Faulkner (2011). “Selected Short Stories”, p.270, Modern Library

The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.

William Faulkner
Needs, Paper, Economic

Women are like that they don't acquire knowledge of people we are for that they are just born with a practical fertility of suspicion that makes a crop every so often and usually right they have an affinity for evil for supplying whatever the evil lacks in itself for drawing it about them instinctively as you do bed-clothing in slumber fertilizing the mind for it until the evil has served its purpose whether it ever existed or no.

William Faulkner
Women, Drawing, People

It has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well and if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it.

William Faulkner
Children, Emotional, Long

Let the past abolish the past when -- and if -- it can substitute something better.

William Faulkner
Past, Substitutes, Something Better
William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.169, Modern Library

Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar.

William Faulkner
Home, August, Air
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.123, Modern Library

People everywhere are about the same, but ... it did seem that in a small town, where evil is harder to accomplish, where opportunities for privacy are scarcer, that people can invent more of it in other people's names. Because that was all it required: that idea, that single idle word blown from mind to mind.

William Faulkner
Opportunity, Names, Ideas
William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.

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

I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.

William Faulkner
Care, Hell, Where You Are
William Faulkner (2013). “The Sound And The Fury”, p.160, Random House

Only the peak feels so sound and stable that the beginning of the falling is hidden for a little while.

William Faulkner
Fall, Littles, Sound
William Faulkner, Noel Polk (1987). “Absalom, Absalom!, typescript setting copy and miscellaneous material”, Facsimiles-Garl

And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.

William Faulkner
Lonely, Deep Water, Wind
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.82, Modern Library

Poor man. Poor mankind.

William Faulkner
Men, Poor, Mankind
Francis Lee Utley, William Faulkner, Lynn Z. Bloom, Arthur F. Kinney (1971). “Bear, man, and God: eight approaches to William Faulkner's The bear”, Random House Inc

The writer's only responsibility is to his art.

William Faulkner
Art, Responsibility
Quoted in Paris Review, Spring 1956

What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.

William Faulkner
Book, Should, Obituary

A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.

William Faulkner
Dream, Hurt, Hair
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.812, Modern Library

So vast, so limitless in capacity is man's imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream.

William Faulkner
Dream, Men, Imagination
William Faulkner (2013). “Requiem For A Nun”, p.230, Random House

Gettysburg. . . . You cant understand it. You would have to be born there.

William Faulkner
Understanding, Gettysburg, Born
William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

We could live like counts. ... If all that money is out there, I might as well hack a little on the side and put the novel off.

William Faulkner
Money, Littles, Might

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