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William Faulkner Quotes - Page 7

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How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

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

Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.

William Faulkner
Sorrow, Sound, Might
William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.142, W. W. Norton & Company

Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.

William Faulkner
Courage, Hurt, Men
William Faulkner (2011). “Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner”, p.364, Vintage

...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. 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, Giving, Victory
The Sound and the Fury pt. 2 (1929)

The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it.

William Faulkner
Honesty, Kids, Artist

Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.

William Faulkner
Art, Men, Climbing
Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

William Faulkner
Writing, Fiction, Telling The Truth

You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you don't know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me.

William Faulkner
Lost Love, Ifs, Knows
William Faulkner (1946). “The Sound and the Fury: And As I Lay Dying”, New York : The Modern library

We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

William Faulkner
Military, Practice, Liberty
William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.151, Modern Library

In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world.

William Faulkner
World, Opinion, Shame
"William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.

William Faulkner
Two, People, World
William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck (1971). “William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck”

Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantlyall the time, is having to accept it.

William Faulkner
Gratitude, Time, Giving
1951 Requiem for a Nun, act 2, sc.1.

...how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.

William Faulkner
Book, Profound, Turns
William Faulkner (1972). “Light in August”, Vintage

Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.

William Faulkner
South
William Faulkner (2013). “Absalom, Absalom!”, p.174, Random House

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.

William Faulkner
Writing, Long, Littles
Francis Lee Utley, William Faulkner, Lynn Z. Bloom, Arthur F. Kinney (1964). “Bear, man, & God: seven approaches to William Faulkner's The bear”

I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind -- and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.

William Faulkner
Moving, Reality, Bereavement
William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck (1971). “William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck”

Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall - Kilroy was here - that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see.

William Faulkner
Life, Success, Wall
Quoted in Faulkner in the University, ed. Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner (1959)

I, the dreamer clinging yet to the dream as the patient clings to the last thin unbearable ecstatic instant of agony in order to sharpen the savor of the pain's surcease, waking into the reality, the more than reality, not to the unchanged and unaltered old time but into a time altered to fit the dream which, conjunctive with the dreamer, becomes immolated and apotheosized

William Faulkner
Dream, Pain, Reality
William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.

William Faulkner
Love, Dream, Regret
William Faulkner (2016). “The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)”, p.203, W. W. Norton & Company

Read, read read. Read everything.

William Faulkner
Writing, Famous Writers, Writers Reading

I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.

William Faulkner
Music, Mean, Trying

Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.

William Faulkner
Writing, Swimming, Men

People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it.

William Faulkner
Frustration, People, Needs

She forced herself once more to think of nothing, to keep her consciousness immersed, as a little dog that one keeps under water until he has stopped struggling

William Faulkner
Dog, Struggle, Thinking

The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.

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

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