William Faulkner Quotes page 2

“It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.”

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.”

“Love doesn't die; the men and women do.”

William Faulkner book If I Forget Thee

Source: The Wild Palms

“Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”

William Faulkner book If I Forget Thee

Variant: Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief
Source: The Wild Palms

“He was looking at her from behind the smiling that wasn't smiling but was something you were not supposed to see beyond.”

“Caddy smelled like trees.”

“This does not matter. This is not anything yet. It all depends on what you do with it, afterward.”

Source: The Sound and the Fury

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

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

“It's terrible to be young. It's terrible. Terrible”

(Ch. 6) "Old Man"; p. 160
The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem] (1939)

“I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.”

“She was the captain of her soul”

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“History is not was, it is.”

Source: Light in August

“I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.”

“I am not one of those women who can stand things.”

Source: Light in August

“And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.”

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.”

Source: Light in August

“War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war.”

Source: The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner book A Fable

Source: A Fable

“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.”

“I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue…”

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

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“My, my. A body does get around.”

“I am trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.”

Source: Light in August

“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.”

“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.”

“Civilization begins with distillation”

Source: The Sound and the Fury

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

“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.”

“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”

Source: Light in August

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

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning.”

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.”