He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph.
WILLIAM FAULKNERRemember, 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.
More William Faulkner Quotes
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Wonder. Go on and wonder.
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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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Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
Truth; that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.
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 -
The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.
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How false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.
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The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
The poets are almost always wrong about the facts… That’s because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth…
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love.
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.
WILLIAM FAULKNER -
There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less.
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If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.
WILLIAM FAULKNER