William Faulkner: Trending quotes

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William Faulkner: 428 quotes25 likes

“Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“It's like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing — from reading.”

William Faulkner

Faulkner in the University, p. 117
Faulkner in the University (1959)

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”

William Faulkner

Source: Essays, Speeches & Public Letters

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

“Wonder. Go on and wonder.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.”

William Faulkner

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

William Faulkner book If I Forget Thee

Source: The Wild Palms

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

William Faulkner book Requiem for a Nun

Act 1, sc. 3; this has sometimes been paraphrased or misquoted as "The past isn't over. It isn't even past."
Source: Requiem for a Nun (1951)

“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.”

William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: 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. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world… would do this, it would change the earth.”

William Faulkner

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

William Faulkner

“The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.”

William Faulkner