Quotessence
Home / Authors / William Faulkner
William Faulkner

William Faulkner Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenIfsWritingPeopleKnowsLittlesLongThinkingTryingArtist

Famous William Faulkner Quotes

“The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.”

FeelsLongPastDesireTurnsBornTakenEnvironmentGenerationsChildhoodEventsDramaDemandConsequenceLaborEternityPursueProvidenceRippleResonanceSpunHeredityWrong TurnRoad Not TakenHeredity And Environment
Author:William Faulkner
Create image

“It has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well and if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it.”

IfsKnowsWellsChildrenLongHas BeensStatesSpeakSubjectsEmotionalTaughtPeriodsRegardSurprisePainfulViolentIdiotPeculiarDreadConfrontingFinalityIrrevocableBewildermentPainless
Author:William Faulkner
Create image

“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.”

KnowsMindI CanEndsBodyRealityRememberMovingYoungSufferingFunctionTownsPhenomenonBereavementFundamentalistTenantsMoving OutNihilistTenements
Book:William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck
Create image

“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.”

KnowsLifeInspirationalTryingDreamMotivationalCan DoCourageLearningInspirational LifePersonalityHigherSelf ImprovementExcellenceImprovementBotherInsperationalPredecessorsDoing Your BestDreams You HaveChange YourselfTry Your BestImproving YourselfDreams And AspirationsBetter Yourself
Author:William Faulkner
Create image

“All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't.”

IfsWritingTryingBelieveDreamArtistCoursesImpossibleConditionsPerfectionBasesRateConvincedIf I CouldOur DreamsSplendid
Author:William Faulkner
Create image

“a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he'd like to escape from living folks. But it's the dead folks that do him the damage. It's the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from.”

MenTryingMightUsedRiskTroubleQuietFellowsLaysFolksDamageCant
Book:Light in August
Create image