William Faulkner: Trending quotes (page 7)

“The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning.”

“It's because I'm alone.. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.”

“Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.”

“I was wrong. I admit it. I believed that there were things which still mattered just because they had mattered once. But I was wrong. Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to be alive.”

“There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.”

“It was like something you have dreaded and feared and dodged for years until it seemed like all your life, then despite everything it happened to you and all it was was just pain, all it did was hurt and so it was all over, all finished, all right.”

“Though children can accept adults as adults, adults can never accept children as anything but adults too.”

“And he was not old enough to talk and say nothing at the same time.”

“Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.”

“Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.”

“Did you ever have a sister? did you?”

“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.”

“I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.”

“One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

“There is no such thing as was—only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.”

“… how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.”

“Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.”

“The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.”

“We shall not kill and maybe next time we even won't.”