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William Faulkner

William Faulkner Quotes

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Famous William Faulkner Quotes

“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.”

MenWritingHumansHeartLongProblemTodayYoungSpiritBearsConflictUniversalTragedyForgottenYoung ManSweatAgonyHuman HeartGood Writing
Author:William Faulkner
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“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
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“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
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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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“…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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“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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“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”

WritingTryingLongDoeI CanEnoughCharacterMovingCan DoBehindsFeetPaperPencilsFiction WritingWriters And WritingFiction WritersWriting FictionWriting By WritersCreativity And WritingPaper And Pencil
Book:Faulkner at West Point
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“Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibres waving slow as the motion of sleep. They don't touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones.”

WayLongMatterWaterSleepGoneLong TimeShadowLaysBottomBonesBridgesDelicateLeafsLong WayTissues
Book:The Sound and the Fury: And As I Lay Dying
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“When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...”

PeopleKnowsWellsMayMeanChildrenLongDoeEnoughDesireSpeakStepsBoysKnow HowCrimeIgnoranceFruitCommitInnocenceLong AgoElevenChildren Innocence
Author:William Faulkner
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