The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.
WILLIAM FAULKNERThe writer’s only responsibility is to his art.
WILLIAM FAULKNERThe field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
WILLIAM FAULKNERI only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o’clock every day.
WILLIAM FAULKNERIf 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…
WILLIAM FAULKNERAll l mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don’t know why either except that the strings are all in one another’s way.
WILLIAM FAULKNERThe aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.
WILLIAM FAULKNERI have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
WILLIAM FAULKNERTo understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.
WILLIAM FAULKNERRead, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.
WILLIAM FAULKNERAs long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people.
WILLIAM FAULKNERHistory is not was, it is.
WILLIAM FAULKNERArtists do; I don’t mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
WILLIAM FAULKNERTime is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was – only is.
WILLIAM FAULKNERA 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 FAULKNERFor 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…
WILLIAM FAULKNERIt’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.
WILLIAM FAULKNER