William Faulkner Quotes

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.

It's all now you see: tomorrow began yesterday and yesterday won't be over until tomorrow.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.

I am not one of those women who can stand things.

He was looking at her from behind the smiling that wasn't smiling but was something you were not supposed to see beyond.

She was the captain of her soul

I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.

If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time

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.

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it — you can't teach it.

I was wrong. I admit it. I believed that there were things which still mattered just because they had mattered once. But I was wrong. Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to be alive.

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not.