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William Faulkner

William Faulkner Quotes

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Famous William Faulkner Quotes

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means.”

MeanArtPhilosophyArtistHistoryAimStrangerArtificialFine ArtsFamous ArtistInspirational ArtistFine ArtistsPainting ArtPainting And ArtArtificial Life
Book:Yoknapatawpha, images and voices: a photographic study of Faulkner's County, with passages from classic William Faulkner texts
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“We will have to choose not between color nor race nor religion nor between East and West either, but simply between being slaves and being free. And we will have to choose completely and for good; the time is already past now when we can choose a little of each, a little of both. We can choose a state of slavedom, and if we are powerful enough to be among the top two or three or ten, we can have a certain amount of license - until someone more powerful rises and has us machine-gunned against a cellar wall.”

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Book:Essays, Speeches & Public Letters
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“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.”

PeopleKnowsWayTryingMovingBornAtheismArmsLegsStringsArms And Legs
Author:William Faulkner
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“So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.”

NeedsLittlesHas BeensRunningArtistMy OwnPleasureEnvironmentBloodCostSolitudePaperToolsPressureTradeMore TimeFrustratedTobaccoWhiskeyOutragedBlood PressureBeing Frustrated
Author:William Faulkner
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“'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.”

IfsMenNeedsFeelsWritingDoePleasureTalkingPleaseBusyShopsToo BusyPlease Me
Author:William Faulkner
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“He made the earth first and peopled it with dumb creatures, and then He created man to be His overseer on the earth and to hold suzerainty over the earth and the animals on it in His name, not to hold for himself and his descendants inviolable title forever, generation after generation, to the oblongs and squares of the earth, but to hold the earth mutual and intact in the communal anonymity of brotherhood, and all the fee He asked was pity and humility and sufferance and endurance and the sweat of has face for bread.”

MenFirstsMadeEarthFacesNamesAnimalForeverGenerationsHumilityCreaturesEnvironmentalBreadPityDumbTitlesMutualEnduranceSquaresSweatBrotherhoodStewardshipDescendantsFeesAnonymity
Book:Bear, man, and God: eight approaches to William Faulkner's The bear
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“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten 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. He must learn them again.”

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Author:William Faulkner
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