William Faulkner Quotes

page 2

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”

“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.”

“You can't. You just have to.”

“How do our lives ravel out
into the no-wind, no-sound,
the weary gestures wearily recapitulant:
echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string:
in sunset we fall into furious attitudes,
dead gestures of dolls.”

“The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.”

“And sure enough, even waiting will end… if you can just wait long enough.”

“You intend to kiss me and yet you are going to all this damn trouble about it.”

“Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least.”

“I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”

“The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.”

“Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.”

“We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.”

“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.”

“Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.”

“You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

“Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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”

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

“She was the captain of her soul”

“History is not was, it is.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My, my. A body does get around.”

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

“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”

“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”

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

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

“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.”