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William Faulkner
122 quotes
“For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God's aid... and the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mistral" (1931) — short story found in Collected Stories (1950)
“Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bear" in The Saturday Evening Post (May 9, 1942)
“It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago, and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Malcolm Cowley (February 11, 1949), quoted in William Faulkner: A Critical Essay (1970) by Martin Jarrett-Kerr, p. 46; also published in Selected Letters of William Faulkner (1978) by Joseph Blotner, p. 286
“There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Elliot Chaze, "Visit to Two-Finger Typist", LIFE magazine (July 14, 1961)
“Why that's a hundred miles away. That's a long way to go just to eat.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On declining invitation to White House dinner honoring Nobel laureates, as quoted in Life magazine (January 20, 1962)
“Some folks wouldn't even speak when they passed me on the street. Then MGM came to town to film Intruder in the Dust, and that made some difference because I'd brought money into Oxford [Mississippi]. But it wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand thirty thousand dollars.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the opinion of his neighbors of his writing profession, as quoted in "Faulkner Without Fanfare" in Esquire (July 1963), later published in M. Thomas Inge's Conversations with William Faulkner (1999), p. 102
“Well, between Scotch and nothin', I suppose I'd take Scotch. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in the National Observer (February 3, 1964)
“Civilization," mused Bill once, "started with distillation.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed in James W. Webb and A. Wigfall Green (eds.) William Faulkner of Oxford (1965) p. 110
“There is no such thing," meditated Bill, "as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damnfool if he doesn't.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed in William Faulkner of Oxford (1965) p. 110
“I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed in Thomas V. Morris, True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence (1994) p. 41
“Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: April Sixth, 1928
“When people act like niggers, no matter who they are, the only thing to do is treat them like a nigger.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: April Sixth, 1928; Jason to Caddy
“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 (1897–1962) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: April Eighth, 1928
“Dilsey stroked Ben's lower head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow. He wailed quietly, unhurriedly. "Hush," Dilsey said. "Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now." He wailed quietly and steadily.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: April Eighth, 1928
“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 (1897–1962) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June Second, 1910
“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.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June Second, 1910
“Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June Second, 1910
“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How often have Ι lain beneath rain on a strange roof thinking of home.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My mother is a fish.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I think it ain’t none of us pure crazy and ain’t none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it ain’t so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They pulled two seats together so Darl could sit by the window. One of them sat beside him, the other sat on the seat facing him, riding backward. One of them had to ride backward because state's money has a face to each backside and a backside to each face, and they are riding on the state's money which is incest. A nickel has a woman on one side and a buffalo on the other; two faces and no back. I don't know what that is. Darl had a little spy-glass he got in France at the war. In it it had a woman and a pig with two backs and no face. I know what that is.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying lightly in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him the damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from.’”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poor man. Poor mankind.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We never thought, sitting in my office on those afternoons, discussing Voltaire and Ingersoll, that we would ever be brought to this, did we?You, the atheist whom the mere sight of a church spire on the sky could enrage; and I who have never been able to divorce myself from reason enough even to accept your pleasant and labor-saving theory of nihilism.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is Robert Ingersoll telling me that for twenty years I have leaned upon a reed no stronger than myself?”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You see, if I could believe that I shall see and touch him again, I shall not have lost him. And if I have not lost him, I shall never have had a son. Because I am I through bereavement and because of it. I do not know what I was nor what I shall be. But because of death, I know that I am. And that is all the immortality of which intellect is capable and flesh should desire. Anything else is for peasants, clods, who could never have loved a son well enough to have lost him.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She accepted that—not reconciled: accepted-- as though there is a breathing-point in outrage where you can accept it almost with gratitude since you can say to yourself, Thank God that is all; at least I know it all.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... but one mistake; that alertness for measuring and weighing event against eventuality, circumstance against human nature, his own fallible judgement and mortal clay against not only human but natural forces, choosing and discarding, compromising with his dream and his ambition like you must with the horse which you take across country, over timber, which you control only through your ability to keep the animal from realising that actually you cannot, that actually it is the stronger.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happen is never once.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are my brother. No I'm not. I'm the nigger that's going to sleep with your sister. Unless you stop me, Henry.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now I want you to tell me just one thing more. Why do you hate the South?" "I dont hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont hate it," he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I had never actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the sum of love is what you have to pay for it and any time you get it cheap you have cheated yourself.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... not sin, he thought, I don't believe in sin. It's getting out of timing. You are born submerged in anonymous lockstep with the teeming anonymous myriads of your time and generation; you get out of step once, falter once, and you are trampled to death.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say love dies between two people. That's wrong. It doesn't die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you are not good enough, worthy enough. It doesn't die; you're the one that dies.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...a mule will work for you ten years for the privilege of kicking you once.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source