William Faulkner Quotes about Life

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Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

William Faulkner

Life, Honesty, Now And Then

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.

William Faulkner

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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

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.

William Faulkner

Life, Art, Moving

1956 Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail...because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

William Faulkner

Life, Believe, Sacrifice

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

William Faulkner

Life, Equality, Alaska

William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.101, Modern Library

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

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.

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 think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.

William Faulkner

Life, Thinking, People

William Faulkner (1955). “Mosquitoes”, New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation

Living is one constant and perpetual instant when the arras-veil before what-is-to-be hangs docile and even glad to the lightest naked thrust if we had dared, were brave enough (not wise enough: no wisdom needed here) to make the rending gash.

William Faulkner

Life, Wise, Brave

William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”