William Faulkner: Trending quotes

William Faulkner trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
William Faulkner: 428 quotes25 likes

“My, my. A body does get around.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August

“If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“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

“They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“Civilization begins with distillation”

William Faulkner

“She clung to that which had robbed her, as people do.”

William Faulkner

“She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“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.”

William Faulkner

On himself and his contemporaries.
Paris Review interview (1958)

“When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.”

William Faulkner

“I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!”

William Faulkner book Absalom, Absalom!

The Mansion (1959)
Source: Absalom, Absalom!
Context: Or maybe married men dont even need reasons, being as they already got wives. Or maybe it's women that dont need reasons, for the simple reason that they never heard of a reason and wouldn't recognise it face to face, since they dont function from reasons but from necessities that couldn't nobody help nohow and that dont nobody but a fool man want to help in the second place, because he dont know no better; it aint women, it's men that takes ignorance seriously, getting into a skeer [scare] over something for no more reason than that they dont happen to know what it is.

V. K. Ratliff in Ch. 6

“Even sound seemed to fail in this air, like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

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

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Variant: 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.
Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)