A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.
William Faulkner
3
A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.
William Faulkner
4
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
William Faulkner
5
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
William Faulkner
6
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
7
Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
William Faulkner
8
Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
William Faulkner
9
I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
William Faulkner
I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
William Faulkner
12
I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
William Faulkner
13
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.
William Faulkner
14
I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.
William Faulkner
15
I'm inclined to think that a military background wouldn't hurt anyone.
William Faulkner
16
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.
William Faulkner
17
If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.
William Faulkner
18
If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back 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.
William Faulkner
19
It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died.
William Faulkner
20
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
21
Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
William Faulkner
22
Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly is having to accept it.
William Faulkner
23
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.
William Faulkner
24
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
William Faulkner
25
Our tragedy is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it... the basest of all things is to be afraid.
William Faulkner
26
Perhaps they were right in putting love into books... Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
William Faulkner
27
Pointless... like giving caviar to an elephant.
William Faulkner
28
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
29
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
30
The best job that was ever offered to me was to become a landlord in a brothel. In my opinion it's the perfect milieu for an artist to work in.
William Faulkner
31
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
William Faulkner
32
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
William Faulkner
33
The salvation of the world is in man's suffering.
William Faulkner
34
The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies.
William Faulkner
35
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.
William Faulkner
36
This is a free country. Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.
William Faulkner
37
To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.
William Faulkner
38
Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.
William Faulkner
39
Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest.
William Faulkner
40
We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.
William Faulkner
41
Well, between Scotch and nothin', I suppose I'd take Scotch. It's the nearest thing to good moonshine I can find.
William Faulkner
