William Faulkner Quotes

That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.

William Faulkner

• Children
• Pride
• Learned
• Motherhood
• Invented

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Quotes to Explore

• The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

  

  William Faulkner
  • True
  • Fiction
  • Journalism

• Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Truth
  • Compassion
  • Afraid

• Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the back either. Just refuse to bear them.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Picture
  • Injustice
  • Cash

• I 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 Faulkner
  • Believe
  • Help
  • Problem

• The salvation of the world is in man's suffering.

  

  William Faulkner
  • World
  • Suffering
  • Salvation

• How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Sunset
  • Compulsion
  • Dolls

• Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories. The past is never dead, it is not even past.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Family
  • Memories
  • Dead

• There is no such thing 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 damn fool if he doesn't.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Man
  • Fool
  • Whiskey

• The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself, after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Clock
  • Pulse
  • Cleared

• The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Women
  • Words
  • Know

• It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there's always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Morning
  • Discovered
  • Occupation

• I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.

  

  William Faulkner
  • People
  • Trouble
  • Learned

• No man can write who is not first a humanitarian.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Man
  • Write
  • Humanitarian

• You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you don't know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me.

  

  William Faulkner
  • I Know
  • Lost Love

• Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Nothing
  • Grief

• The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country. He's like a fine dog. People like him around, but he's of no use.

  

  William Faulkner
  • America
  • Culture
  • Writer

• A gentleman can live through anything.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Gentleman
  • Can

• He thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself. But the street ran on: catlike, one place was the same as another to him. But in none of them could he be quiet. But the street ran on in its moods and phases, always empty: he might have seen himself as in numberless avatars, in silence, doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Silence
  • Opportunities
  • Loneliness

• The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. 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
  • Mind
  • Remember
  • Woman

• There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Reality
  • Rock
  • Maelstrom

• The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don't.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Artists
  • Writers
  • Reviews

• ...and you don't even have to sleep alone, you don't even have to sleep at all; and so, all you have to do is show the stick to the dog now and then and say, 'Thank God for nothing.'

  

  William Faulkner
  • Sleep
  • Thank God
  • Stick

• One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

  

  William Faulkner
  • Sin
  • Salvation
  • Believed

• It's terrible to be young. It's terrible. Terrible

  

  William Faulkner
  • Young
  • Terrible