William Faulkner Quotes

"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain."
-William Faulkner in Experience quotes.

"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."
-William Faulkner

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
-William Faulkner

"The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."
-William Faulkner

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."
-William Faulkner

"The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat."
-William Faulkner

"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."
-William Faulkner

"Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met."
-William Faulkner

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
-William Faulkner

"I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth."
-William Faulkner

"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."
-William Faulkner

"Pointless. . . . Like giving caviar to an elephant."
-William Faulkner

"The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it."
-William Faulkner

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."
-William Faulkner

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
-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 is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window."
-William Faulkner

"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."
-William Faulkner