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William Faulkner Quotes - Page 6

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I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.

I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.

William Faulkner
Thinking, White, People
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.87, Modern Library

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

William Faulkner
Life, Wall, Moving
"William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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

William Faulkner
People, Clean, Swiss

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done. The writer's only responsibility is to his art.

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

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

William Faulkner
Writing, Thinking, Knows

The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.

William Faulkner
Heartbreak, Lost Love, Forever
William Faulkner (2014). “Soldier's Pay”, p.319, Random House

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

William Faulkner
Writing, Two, Imagination

Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing.

William Faulkner
Believe, Eye, Men
"Light in August" by William Faulkner, (Ch. 2), 1932.

As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

William Faulkner
Two, Long, People

Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice.

William Faulkner
Sacrifice, Curiosity, Mistress
William Faulkner (2011). “Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion”, p.969, Modern Library

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

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

I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o'clock every day.

William Faulkner
Inspiration, Writing, Clock

the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

William Faulkner
Writing, Heart, Agony
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, 10 Dec. 1950

Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.

William Faulkner
Believe, Men, Evil
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.105, Modern Library

...It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

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

It feels almost soft, like something to be caressed. Only gold feels that way.

William Faulkner
Gold, Way, Feels

...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”

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

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

Caddy smelled like trees.

William Faulkner
Tree
William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.321, W. W. Norton & Company

Riches is nothing in the face of the Lord, for He can see into the heart.

William Faulkner
Heart, Riches, Faces
William Faulkner (1954). “The Best of Faulkner”

I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie

William Faulkner
Lying, Knowing, Not Knowing
William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.168, Modern Library

You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.

William Faulkner
Baptists, Old Testament, Ulysses
"William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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

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