Quotes by "William Faulkner"

Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.

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.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Too much happens ... Man performs, engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.

Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.

Fear is the most damnable, damaging thing to human personality in the whole world.

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't.

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.

One of the saddest things is, the only thing a man can do for 8 hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat 8 hours a day nor drink for 8 hours a day, nor make love for 8 hours.

The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.

You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.

She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

The 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.

A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

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.

I am the chosen of the Lord, for who He loveth, so doeth He chastiseth. But I be durn if He dont take some curious ways to show it, seems like.