William Faulkner
An American writer and Nobel Prize laureate, known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.
Quotes by William Faulkner
The past is never dead. It's not even past.
Given the choice between the experience of life and the illustration of life, I will choose the illustration.
Clocks slay time... Time is dead as long as it is being measured.
Man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think that was the truth, but the next day you'd think that was a lie.
To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
The artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.
It's not when you realize that nothing can help you — religion, pride, anything — it's when you realize that you don't need any aid.
The past is not a dead thing, it is a living thing, and it is always with us.
Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.
I decline to accept the end of man.
The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.
The courage to be afraid and to be brave at the same time.
You don't love because: you love despite; not for what one does, but for what one is.
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It is his dream and it is his to tell.