William Faulkner

“I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand.  That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died.”

“The past is not dead.  In fact, it’s not even past.”

“A man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.  Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.”

“The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.”

“The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.”

“We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.”

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

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

“My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.”

“Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly is having to accept it.”

“Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.”

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

“I believe that man will not merely endure.  He will prevail.  He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

“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.”

“To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.”

“Perhaps they were right in putting love into books...  Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.”

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

“If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.”

“I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.”

“The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”

“Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency to get the book written.”

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

“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.”

“The salvation of the world is in man’s suffering.”

“Clocks slay time...  time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”

“The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics.  The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”

“Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”

“Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”

“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.”

“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”

“A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.”

“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.”

“Don’t try to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.”

“Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.”

“I decline to accept the end of man.”

“I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”

“I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.”

“I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I don’t care.  I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.”

“I’m inclined to think that a military background wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Man will not merely endure; he will prevail.”

“Our tragedy is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it...  the basest of all things is to be afraid.”

“Pointless...  like giving caviar to an elephant.”

“The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.”

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

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

“This is a free country.  Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.”

“To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

“Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.”

“Unless you’re ashamed of yourself now and then, you’re not honest.”

“Well, between Scotch and nothin’, I suppose I’d take Scotch.  It’s the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find.”