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William Faulkner Quotes - Page 5

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They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest

They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

William Faulkner
Liars, Lying, Men
William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

. . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and---from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.

William Faulkner
Christian, Fall, Light

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

William Faulkner
Mean, Men, Trying
William Faulkner (1937). “Soldiers' Pay”

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

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

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

William Faulkner
Courage, Integrity, Believe
William Faulkner, Joseph Leo Blotner (1978). “Selected letters of William Faulkner”, Vintage

Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

William Faulkner
Fun, Grief, Statistics
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem "The Wild Palms" (1939)

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

William Faulkner
Advice, Inability, Fool
William Faulkner (1985). “Novels, 1930-1935”, Library of America

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863...

William Faulkner
Boys, July, Years
"Intruder in the Dust". Book by William Faulkner, 1948.

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!”

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

William Faulkner
Life, Time, Long
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.87, Modern Library

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

The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

William Faulkner
Poetry, Facts, Not Interested
"The Town" by William Faulkner, (Ch. 5), 1957.

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

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

William Faulkner
Dream, Writing, Artist

You can't beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to.

William Faulkner
Wise, Women, Trying

It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.

William Faulkner
Funny, Work, Men

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!”

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

William Faulkner
Running, Horse, Writing

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

William Faulkner
Men, Victory, Despair
The Sound and the Fury pt. 2 (1929)

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

No man can write who is not first a humanitarian

William Faulkner
Writing, Men, Firsts
1957 In Time, 25 Feb.

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

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

William Faulkner
Teaching, Writing, Love And Honor
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

No one individual can tell the truth.

William Faulkner
Telling The Truth, Individual

You get born and you try this and you don't know why, only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way.

William Faulkner
Moving, People, Atheism

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