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
moving character writing
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
writing heart agony
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
inspiring art busy
An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why.
grief sorrow would-be
There is no such thing as was—only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.
writing men firsts
No man can write who is not first a humanitarian
martini bigger feels
When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.
women saint villain
Women ... to them any wedding is better than no wedding and a big wedding with a villain preferable to a small one with a saint.
writing trying doe
I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
love dream regret
Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.
dream pain reality
I, the dreamer clinging yet to the dream as the patient clings to the last thin unbearable ecstatic instant of agony in order to sharpen the savor of the pain's surcease, waking into the reality, the more than reality, not to the unchanged and unaltered old time but into a time altered to fit the dream which, conjunctive with the dreamer, becomes immolated and apotheosized
sleep men orchids
You like orchids?... Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
inspirational motivational history
History is not was, it is.
fiction journalism newspapers
The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.
military practice liberty
We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.