William Faulkner Quotes
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There is no such thing as was - only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.
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It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.
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Love doesn't die; the men and women do.
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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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Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
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She was the captain of her soul.
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History is not was, it is.
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Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.
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It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.
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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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...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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So, never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.
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Marriage is long enough to have plenty of room for time behind it.
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Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid.
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The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
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Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
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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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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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I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
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A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station….
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I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.
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All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't.
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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.
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No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.