William Faulkner

Novelist, Poet, Playwright

William Faulkner was an American writer known for his complex narratives and innovative use of time and memory, particularly in works like 'As I Lay Dying.'

Born
September 25, 1897
Died
July 6, 1962
Quotes
383
Rank
#170

Quote collection

William Faulkner quotes (page 8 of 20)

383 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"...I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"To me, all human behavior is unpredictable and, considering man's frailty... and... the ramshackle universe he functions in, it's... all irrational."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"Living is one constant and perpetual instant when the arras-veil before what-is-to-be hangs docile and even glad to the lightest naked thrust if we had dared, were brave enough (not wise enough: no wisdom needed here) to make the rending gash."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"Fear is the most damnable, damaging thing to human personality in the whole world."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall - Kilroy was here - that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see."

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"Riches is nothing in the face of the Lord, for He can see into the heart."

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"Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us."

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"I'm inclined to think that a military background wouldn't hurt anyone."

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"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."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"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."

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William Faulkner Novelist, Poet, Playwright
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"The most important thing is insight, that is to be - curious - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does."

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"Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder."

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