Home > Author > William Faulkner
1 " The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten. "
― William Faulkner
2 " She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it. "
― William Faulkner , The Town
3 " You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults. "
4 " I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time. "
― William Faulkner , As I Lay Dying
5 " Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. "
6 " The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. "
7 " Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. "
8 " Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth. "
9 " The best fiction is far more true than any journalism. "
10 " ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crises with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth. "
― William Faulkner , Light in August
11 " And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie. "
12 " I am the chosen of the Lord, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth. But I be durn if He dont take some curious ways to show it, seems like. "
13 " I reckon if there’s ere a man or woman anywhere that He could turn it all over to and go away with His mind at rest, it would be Cora. And I reckon she would make a few changes, no matter how He was running it. And I reckon they would be for man’s good. Leastways, we would have to like them. Leastways, we might as well go on and make like we did. "
14 " If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can. "
― William Faulkner , Absalom, Absalom!
15 " You don't dare think whole even to yourself the entirety of a dear hope or wish let alone a desperate one else you yourself have doomed it. "
― William Faulkner , Intruder in the Dust
16 " Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain. "
― William Faulkner , The Wild Palms
17 " I reckon it does take a powerful trust in the Lord to guard a fellow, though sometimes I think that Cora’s a mite over-cautious, like she was trying to crowd the other folks away and get in closer than anybody else. "
18 " Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window. "
19 " In writing, you must kill all your darlings. "
20 " Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good. "
