William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulknerwas an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 September 1897
CityNew Albany, MS
writing ideas simplicity
When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't.
art horse hands
Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand. They are afraid to find out how tough they are. Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich. 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.
bus-stops logical desks
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station….
horse jumping feel-good
There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need.
mother dream art
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. 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.
voice people desire
They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.
long reason ready
...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.
sunset tea dies
The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.
inspirational positive hope
Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.
music mean trying
I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.
earth hot blind
I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
drinking scotch-whisky whiskey
There is no such thing as a bad whisky. Some whiskies just happen to be better than others.
men dead-man
any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man
art powerful writing
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.