William Faulkner: Timing

William Faulkner was American writer. Explore interesting quotes on timing.
William Faulkner: 428 quotes25 likes

“Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

“The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.”

William Faulkner

“Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was”

William Faulkner

only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow. I like to think of the world I created as being a kind of keystone in the universe; that, small as that keystone is, if it were ever taken away the universe itself would collapse.
Paris Review interview (1958)

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

William Faulkner

“I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“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.”

William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“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.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Variant: ... the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.
Source: As I Lay Dying

“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.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

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.”

William Faulkner

“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

“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)

“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.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August

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

William Faulkner book Intruder in the Dust

Source: Intruder in the Dust

“That’s what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“… maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly all the time, is having to accept it.”

William Faulkner book Requiem for a Nun

Act 2, sc. 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=EBMFAQAAIAAJ&amp;q=%22Maybe+the+only+thing+worse+than+having+to+give+gratitude+constantly%22+%22is+having+to+accept+it%22&amp;pg=PA155#v=onepage <br class="br">Requiem for a Nun (1951)

“Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move — which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”

William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)