William Faulkner Quotes
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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.
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An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
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History is not was, it is.
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You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.
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So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.
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No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.
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He was looking at her from behind the smiling that wasn't smiling but was something you were not supposed to see beyond.
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...thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.
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There were many things I could do for two or three days and earn enough money to live on for the rest of the month. By temperament I'm a vagabond and a tramp.
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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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Surely there is something in madness, even the demoniac, which Satan flees, aghast at his own handiwork, and which God looks on in pity.
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I don't want money badly enough to work for it.
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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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I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness – people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.
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Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.
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So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice.
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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.
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Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
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The air brightened, the running shadow patches were now the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he was carrying ancient wounds.
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I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.
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Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.
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When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.
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To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.
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Setting an example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.