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William Faulkner Quotes
1897–1962 United States
William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American novelist and short story writer whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. He was regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.
United States Nobel laureates Novelists Playwrights Poets Also known as: Faulkner, Faulkner, William, Absalom absalom, Absalom, Absalom, Absalom, Absalom!
Random William Faulkner quote
70 quotes
Man must have light. He must live in the fierce full constant glare of light, where all shadow will be defined and sharp and unique and personal: the shadow of his own singular rectitude or baseness. All human evils have to come out of obscurity and darkness, where there is nothing to dog man constantly with the shape of his own deformity.
The Mansion (1959)
The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.
Paris Review interview (1958)
Then me too in Paris for the last two weeks, to see if the Paris of Hemingway and the Paris of Scott Fitzgerald (they were not the same ones; they merely used the same room) had vanished completely or not too.
The Mansion (1959)
It was just noon that Saturday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man.
Intruder in the Dust (1948)
The poets are wrong of course. ... But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.
The Town (1957)
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
Paris Review interview (1958)
... girls, women, are not interested in romance but only facts.
The Town (1957)
For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God's aid... and the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy.
Mistral (1931)
Sometimes I think it ain’t none of us pure crazy and ain’t none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it ain’t so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.
As I Lay Dying (1930)
The two great men in my time were Mann and Joyce. You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.
Paris Review interview (1958)
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