Top 100 Faulkner's Quotes
#1. Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism ...
Hunter S. Thompson
#2. Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they think they know all about Stendhal's or Faulkner's.
Milan Kundera
#3. In 1966, I attended Marquette University and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1970. I received my doctorate in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where I wrote my dissertation on William Faulkner's early novels.
Laurence Yep
#4. It worries me that undergrads and high school students are forced into books they aren't ready for, like Faulkner's, and then they are afraid of putting their toes in the water again.
Alice McDermott
#5. The South is full of memories and ghosts of the past. For me, it is the most inspiring place to write, from William Faulkner's haunted antebellum home to the banks of the Mississippi to the wind that whispers through the cotton fields.
Alexandra Adornetto
#6. I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes, not at all.
Manuel Puig
#7. I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.
Ken Burns
#8. 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.
William Faulkner
#9. Well, between Scotch and nothin', I suppose I'd take Scotch. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find.
William Faulkner
#10. That's sad too, people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today
William Faulkner
#11. It's better to build a tight chicken coop than a shoddy courthouse.
William Faulkner
#12. A fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it's liable to strike anywhere, like lightning.
William Faulkner
#13. If you got something outside the common run that's got to be done and cant wait, dont waste your time on the menfolks; they works on what your uncle calls the rules and the cases. Get the womens and the children at it; they works on the circumstances.
William Faulkner
#14. The poets are almost always wrong about the facts. That's because they're not interested in the facts, only the truth.
William Faulkner
#15. The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He's supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn't part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation.
William Faulkner
#16. I reckon I'll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my life, but thank God I won't ever again have to be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who's got two cents to buy a stamp.
William Faulkner
#18. The young girl who slept waking in some suspension so completely physical as to resemble the state before birth and as far removed from reality's other extreme as Ellen was from hers
William Faulkner
#19. It's a curious thing how no matter what's wrong with you, a man'll tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman'll tell you to get married.
William Faulkner
#20. You intend to kiss me and yet you are going to all this damn trouble about it.
William Faulkner
#21. In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior. In America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.
William Faulkner
#22. The only rule I have is to quit while it's still hot. Never write yourself out. Always quit when it's going good. Then it's easier to take it up again. If you exhaust yourself, then you'll get into a dead spell and you'll have trouble with it.
William Faulkner
#23. That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing - from reading.
William Faulkner
#24. I could still see the smoke stack. That's where the water would be, healing out to the sea and the peaceful grottoes.
William Faulkner
#25. Then he came back through the Square late that Saturday afternoon (there had been a ball game on the High School field) and he heard that Lucas had killed Vinson Gowrie out at Fraser's store;
William Faulkner
#26. To me, all human behavior is unpredictable and, considering man's frailty ... and ... the ramshackle universe he functions in, it's ... all irrational.
William Faulkner
#27. I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books.
William Faulkner
#28. It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.
William Faulkner
#29. It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.
William Faulkner
#30. My father was among the first of his generation to look into writers who've become part of the American lit. canon. When he wrote his master's thesis on William Faulkner in the Forties, he couldn't find anybody on the faculty at Columbia University to oversee it because they didn't read Faulkner.
Antonya Nelson
#31. 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.
William Faulkner
#32. My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.
William Faulkner
#33. There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.
William Faulkner
#34. So that's it," he said. "Three hundred dollars. I wish somebody would come into this country with a seed that had to be worked everyday from New Year's right on through Christmas. As soon as you niggers are laid-by, trouble starts.
William Faulkner
#35. Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
William Faulkner
#36. A year after Hemingway died on the front page, Faulkner went off after a binge, as if dying was nobody's business but his own.
Alfred Kazin
#37. Whatever life throws at me, I'll take with a smile upon my face and Nirvana's 'Bleach' on the stereo.
Mark R. Faulkner
#38. Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.
William Faulkner
#39. I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.
Barry Hannah
#40. Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.
William Faulkner
#41. So vast, so limitless in capacity is man's imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream.
William Faulkner
#42. It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.
William Faulkner
#43. That's the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.
William Faulkner
#44. In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world.
William Faulkner
#45. If you're going to be a narcissistic schmuck, kid, don't bother studying Faulkner. Go straight to Brett Easton Ellis. He's the role model you need.
Arinn Dembo
#46. It's because I'm alone.. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.
William Faulkner
#47. I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.
William Faulkner
#48. Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.
William Faulkner
#49. I never promise a woman anything nor let her know what I'm going to give her. That's the only way to manage them. Always keep them guessing. If you cant think of any other way to surprise them, give them a bust in the jaw.
William Faulkner
#50. It is because so much happens. Too much happens. That's it. Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything. That's it. That's what is so terrible. That he can bear anything, anything.
William Faulkner
#51. God is foolish at times, but at least He's a gentleman. Dont you know that?" "I always thought of Him as a man," the woman said.
William Faulkner
#52. 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
#53. It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.
William Faulkner
#54. It's Cash and Jewel and Varadaman and Dewey Del', pa says kind of hangdog and proud too, with this teeth and all, even if he wouldn't look at us. 'Meet Mrs Bundren', he says.
William Faulkner
#55. And when a man that old takes up money-hunting, it's like when he takes up gambling or whisky or women. He aint going to have time to quit.
William Faulkner
#56. It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.
William Faulkner
#57. We must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while it's not always.
William Faulkner
#58. That's what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.
William Faulkner
#59. That's what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again.
William Faulkner
#60. And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless.
William Faulkner
#61. It's not four days ago I find a bastard squatting here, asking me if I read books. Like he would jump me with a book or something. Take me for a ride with the telephone directory.
William Faulkner
#62. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.
William Faulkner
#63. Patricia: Do you know William Faulkner?
Michel: No. Who's he? Have you slept with him?
Jean-Luc Godard
#64. All that any man can hope for is to be permitted to live quietly among his fellows [ ... ] a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got.
William Faulkner
#65. The poets are wrong of course [ ... ] But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.
William Faulkner
#66. It's like a man that's let everything slide all his life to get set on something that will make the most trouble for everybody he knows.
William Faulkner
#67. The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country. He's like a fine dog. People like him around, but he's of no use.
William Faulkner
#68. It used to be I thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of Grandfather's desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room where it was.
William Faulkner
#69. The best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it's the perfect milieu for an artist to work in.
William Faulkner
#70. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.
Ray Bradbury
#71. I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them, you can't stand a fact up, you've got to prop it up, and when you move to one side a little and look at it from that angle, it's not thick enough to cast a shadow in that direction.
William Faulkner
#72. Because Harvard is such a fine sound forty acres is no high price for a fine sound. A fine dead sound we will swap Benjy's pasture for a fine dead sound. It will last him a long time because he cannot hear it unless he can smell it
William Faulkner
#73. A dream is not a very safe thing to be near ... I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
William Faulkner
#74. Who owned no property and never desired to since the earth was no man's but all men's, as light and air and weather were.
William Faulkner
#75. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.
William Faulkner
#76. The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.
William Faulkner
#77. It hasn't been easy to listen to the conversations at the table. Even without anyone expecting me to say anything. It hasn't been easy to sit there watching other people's lives go on. I
Colleen Faulkner
#78. It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.
William Faulkner
#79. Yes. Because they were human men. They were trying to write down the heart's truth out of the heart's driving complexity, for all the complex and troubled hearts which would beat after them.
William Faulkner
#80. For the Lord aimed for him to do and not to spend too much time thinking, because his brain it's like a piece of machinery: it won't stand a whole lot of racking. It's best when it all runs along the same, doing the day's work and not no one part used no more than needful.
William Faulkner
#81. It's like everything in the world for me is inside a tub full of guts, so that you wonder how there can be any room in it for anything else very important.
William Faulkner
#82. Only her eyes seem to move. It's like they touch us, not with sight or sense, but like the stream from a hose touches you, the stream at the instant of impact as dissociated from the nozzle as though it had never been there.
William Faulkner
#83. What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.
William Faulkner
#84. 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.
William Faulkner
#85. I says to myself it's a good thing her eyes are giving out,
William Faulkner
#86. What's wrong with this world is, it's not finished yet. It is not completed to that point where man can put his final signature to the job and say, It is finished. We made it, and it works.
William Faulkner
#87. If we could have just done something so dreadful and Father said That's sad too people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today and I said, You can shirk all things and he said, Ah can you.
William Faulkner
#89. It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.
William Faulkner
#90. William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
Jennifer Haigh
#91. You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.
William Faulkner
#92. There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need.
William Faulkner
#93. The somebody you was young with and you growed old in her and she growed old in you, seeing the old coming in and it was one somebody you could hear say it don't matter and know it was the truth outen the hard world ad all a man's grief and trials.
William Faulkner
#94. The work of the artist is to lift up people's hearts and help them endure.
William Faulkner
#95. I won't talk to you about my family and you won't talk to me about yours. Family talk is either boring or self-pitying. Or it's Gothic, like a Faulkner novel. Who needs to talk about it? It's enough to live it.
Chaim Potok
#97. Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good.
William Faulkner
#98. Dude, I thought you were gonna stay on your side!" he complained. "That's so sweet," I called. "Who was the big spoon?" "Shut up, Faulkner," Austin grumbled.
Robyn Schneider
#99. Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better.
Leslie Fiedler
#100. Listen: it's got to be all honeymoon, always.
Either heaven, or hell:
no comfortable safe peaceful purgatory between
for you and me to wait in until good behavior or forbearance
or shame or repentance overtakes us.
William Faulkner
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
