The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.
WILLIAM FAULKNERSomeone else looks at it and sees a slightly awry phase of it. But taken all together, the truth is in what they saw though nobody saw the truth intact.
More William Faulkner Quotes
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It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.
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If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.
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The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.
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If there is a God what the hell is He for?
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How false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.
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I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail…because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
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I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
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Don’t bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.
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Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.
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I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought.
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Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.
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They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.
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And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.
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It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.
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For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863…
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If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green…
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Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories.
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All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
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Wonder. Go on and wonder.
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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.
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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.
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My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
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Unless you’re ashamed of yourself now and then, you’re not honest
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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.
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Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations.
WILLIAM FAULKNER