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William Faulkner

William Faulkner Quotes

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Famous William Faulkner Quotes

“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.”

IfsLittlesTwoStatesEnoughWisdomPastCertainThreePoliticsPowerfulRaceEconomyColorWallAmountTenMachinesSlaveWestEastLiberalismLicenseBeing FreeCellarsEast And West
Book:Essays, Speeches & Public Letters
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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 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.”

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Book:Essays, Speeches & Public Letters
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“When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.”

MenLittlesLongHas BeensHardDoneOughtSafeFolksEdgesWornJust Being
Book:William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck
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“I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.”

WayLittlesLongLightLastsClearSawsPiecesAirBrokenRiversMirrorsSmellButterflyPaleCurvesLong WayTremblingTranquilDuskHoveringLike A Butterfly
Book:The Sound and the Fury (Third International Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)
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“They say love dies between two people. That’s wrong. It doesn’t die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you aren’t good enough, worthy enough. It doesn’t die; you’re the the one that dies. It’s like the ocean: if you’re no good, if you begin to make a bad smell in it, it just spews you up somewhere to die. You die anyway, but I had rather drown in the ocean than be urped up onto a strip of dead beach and be dried away by the sun into a little foul smear with no name to it, just this was for an epitaph”

PeopleIfsLittlesTwoEnoughDiesNamesSunOceanWorthySmellBeachGood EnoughFoulEpitaph
Author:William Faulkner
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