William Faulkner Quotes

The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.

But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.

No man can write who is not first a humanitarian.

Success is feminine and like a woman; if you cringe before her she will override you. So the way to treat her is to show her the back of your hand. Then maybe she will do the crawling.

If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back as a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one.

Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.

Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly all the time, is having to accept it.

He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honour and pity and compassion and sacrifice.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief.