Quotes by William Faulkner

About William Faulkner:

William Cuthbert Faulkner is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.

William Faulkner

What matters is at the end of life, when you're about to pass into oblivion, that you've at least scratched 'Kilroy was here,' on the last wall of the universe.

William Faulkner

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

William Faulkner

When it's a matter of not-do, I reckon a man can trust himself for advice. But when it comes to a matter of doing, I reckon a fellow had better listen to all the advice he can get.

William Faulkner

Though children can accept adults as adults, adults can never accept children as anything but adults too.

William Faulkner

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

William Faulkner

And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad.

William Faulkner

I mind how I said to you once that there is a price for being good the same as for being bad; a cost to pay. And it's the good men that cant deny the bill when it comes around. They cant deny it for the reason that there aint any way to make them pay...

William Faulkner

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

William Faulkner

It does not take long. Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated lusts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful. It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud. It is like liste...

William Faulkner

It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the natural grayness,...

William Faulkner

It is the man who all his life has been self-convicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

William Faulkner

It is a happy faculty of the mind to slough that which conscience refuses to assimilate.

William Faulkner

Memory believes before knowing remembers. [Light in August]

William Faulkner

Time, the spaces of light and dark, had long since lost orderliness.

William Faulkner

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

he looked at her, stripped naked for the instant of verbiage and deceit.

William Faulkner

Freedom comes with the decision: it does not wait for the act.

William Faulkner

Only fools imply compliments. The wise man comes right out with it, point-blank. Imply criticism--unless the criticized isn't within earshot.

William Faulkner

Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

William Faulkner

Who gathers the withered rose?

William Faulkner

Author Bio

  • NameWilliam Faulkner
  • DescriptionAmerican writer
  • AliasesWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner
  • BornSeptember 25, 1897
  • DiedJuly 6, 1962
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Poet; Novelist; Short Story Writer; Playwright; Writer
  • WorksThe Sound And The Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light In August; Absalom, Absalom!; A Rose For Emily
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature; National Book Award