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

Sex and death: the front door and the back door of the world.

William Faulkner

Stars were golden unicorns neighing unheard through blue meadows.

William Faulkner

Wanton stars galloped neighing like unicorns in blue meadows.

William Faulkner

And George Farr had the town, the earth, the world to himself and his sorrow. Music came faint as a troubling rumor beneath the spring night, sweetened by distance: a longing knowing no ease. (Oh God, oh God!) At last George Farr gave up trying to se...

William Faulkner

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

Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.

William Faulkner

Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.

William Faulkner

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

William Faulkner

...the very old men [...] believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter eve...

William Faulkner

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.

William Faulkner

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.

William Faulkner

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must t...

William Faulkner

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. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him ...

William Faulkner

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." (on Ernest Hemingway

William Faulkner

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

William Faulkner

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

William Faulkner

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, secur...

William Faulkner

The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.

William Faulkner

Man the sum of his climatic experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire.

William Faulkner

All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That'...

William Faulkner

War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.

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