“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

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can…" by William Faulkner?
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner 214
American writer 1897–1962

Related quotes

Christopher Paolini photo

“Applied properly, it [logic] can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Oromis
Eldest (2005)

“Historians are concerned with events which can be assigned to specific timespace locations, events which are (or were) in principle observable or perceivable, whereas imaginative writers – poets, novelists, playwrights – are concerned with both these kinds of events and imagined, hypothetical, or invented ones.”

Hayden White (1928–2018) American historian

"The fictions of factual representation"

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
Arthur Conan Doyle photo

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Hound of the Baskervilles

Source: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Max Beckmann photo

“One thing is sure – we have to transform the three-dimensional world of objects into the two-dimensional world of the canvas... To transform three into two dimensions is for me an experience full of magic in which I glimpse for a moment that fourth dimension which my whole being is seeking.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), p. 16

David Hume photo

“There is nothing in any object, consider'd in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it; […] even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 12
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Ogden Nash photo

“And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer"
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938)
Context: Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it.

Bernhard Riemann photo

“Kant has rightly observed that by the resolution of the concept of a thing we can find neither that it exists nor that it is the cause of something else, and accordingly that the concepts of being and causality are not analytical but can be derived only from experience. When however he later feels himself obliged to assume that the notion of causality originates in a pre-experiential property of the cognising subject and therefore stamps it a mere rule of time-series, by which, in experience, with each observation as cause any other could be connected as effect, then is the child thrown out with the bath.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Indeed, we must derive the relations of causality from experience; but we must not fail to correct and to complete our conception of these facts of experience by reflection.
Causality
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

“One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Max Barry photo

“I read once that you need two things to be happy: any two of health, money, and love. You can cover the absense of one with the other two… But now I realized this was unmitigated bullshit, because health and money did not compare with love at all.”

Max Barry book Machine Man

Source: Machine Man

Related topics