American short story writer, novelist. He was a Nobel Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. One of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, his reputation is based mostly on his novels, novellas, and short stories. He was also a published poet and an occasional screenwriter. The majority of his works are based in his native state of Mississippi.
Faulkner has often been cited as one of the most important writers in the history of American literature.
(1897-1962)
– William Faulkner Quotes –
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
~ William Faulkner
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.
~ William Faulkner
The best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it’s the perfect milieu for an artist to work in.
~ William Faulkner
Our tragedy is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it… the basest of all things is to be afraid.
~ William Faulkner
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
Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly is having to accept it.
~ William Faulkner
Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.
~ William Faulkner
The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.
~ William Faulkner
I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
~ William Faulkner
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
Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.
~ William Faulkner
You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.
~ William Faulkner
Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
~ William Faulkner
This is a free country. Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.
~ William Faulkner
We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.
~ William Faulkner
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
~ William Faulkner
A man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.
~ William Faulkner
There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it’s the risk, the gamble. In any event it’s a thing I need.
~ William Faulkner
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
~ William Faulkner
The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
~ William Faulkner
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
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
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
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
An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.
~ William Faulkner
Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.
~ William Faulkner
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
The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.
~ William Faulkner
I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
~ William Faulkner
