William Faulkner: Trending quotes

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William Faulkner: 428 quotes25 likes

“...ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Gail Hightower's thoughts in Chapter 20
Light in August (1932)

“Poor man. Poor mankind.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August (1932), Chapter 4

“For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God's aid… and the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy.”

William Faulkner

"Mistral" (1931)

“Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint 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

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“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 book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“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.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury (1929)

“When people act like niggers, no matter who they are, the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Jason to Caddy
The Sound and the Fury (1929)

“Why that’s a hundred miles away. That’s a long way to go just to eat.”

William Faulkner

On declining invitation to White House dinner honoring Nobel laureates, as quoted in Life magazine (20 January 1962)

“Be scared. You can't help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.”

William Faulkner

"The Bear” in The Saturday Evening Post (9 May 1942)

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

William Faulkner

Source: As quoted in National Observer (3 February 1964)

“At least wasn't nobody, no outsider, there to hear it so maybe even before next January he was able to believe hadn't none of it even been said, like miracle: what aint believed aint seen.”

William Faulkner book The Mansion

Miracle, pure miracle anyhow, how little a man needs to outlast jest [just] about anything.
V. K. Ratliff about Gavin Stevens in Ch. 6
The Mansion (1959)

“You don't know very much about women, do you?”

William Faulkner book The Town

she said. "Women aren't interested in poets' dreams. They are interested in facts. It doesn't even matter whether the facts are true or not, as long as they match the other facts without leaving a rough seam."
Eula Varner Snopes to Gavin Stevens in Ch. 15
The Town (1957)