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William Faulkner

William Faulkner Quotes

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Famous William Faulkner Quotes

“I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.”

WritingKindLittlesDoeJoyLanguagePayApproachIntentionSoldierSeriousnessEssayistsDynamiteLanguage Words
Book:Essays, Speeches & Public Letters
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“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

PeopleNeedsLongMatterUsedSinTalkingPridePrayingOne DayShapesLong TimeBlindSalvationRight Time
Book:The Best of Faulkner
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“If there was anything at all in the Book, anything of hope and peace for His blind and bewildered spawn which He had chosen above all others to offer immortality, THOU SHALT NOT KILL must be it.”

IfsBookOffersBlindChosenImmortalityBewilderedSpawn
Book:A Rose for Emily and Other Stories: A Rose for Emily; The Hound; Turn About; That Evening Sun; Dry September; Delta Autumn; Barn Burning; An Odor of Verbena
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“...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.”

MenGivingTryingMaySaidMomentsMightRememberDesireForgetFieldsFoolVictoryBattleDespairIllusionBreathsPhilosopherConquerFollyNow And ThenForget ItFuryMausoleum
Author:William Faulkner
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“…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.”

ThinkingShouldLongDoneLightFormLyingFeltHalfShadowShould HaveDenialAwakeVisibleSignificanceGrayStableInherentRelevanceParadoxicalCorridorsLooking DownAntics
Book:The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)
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“I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWantWritingYoungTeachSourceDrivenDemonOlder PeopleYoung Writers
Author:William Faulkner
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“In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sad about anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn't it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That's why that's sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it.”

MenBelieveMeanHas BeensSaidMatterStatesLyingFatherLeftBoysSouthAshamedVirginsVirginitySo Sad
Book:The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)
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