Top 450 William Faulkner Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Courage Quotes

2. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Fiction Quotes, Past Quotes, History Quotes

3. “History is not was, it is.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: History Quotes

4. “Don’t bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Self-Realization Quotes, Quotes About Trying

5. “The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Human Nature Quotes

6. “You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Virtue Quotes, Romantic Quotes

7. “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

— William Faulkner

8. “Try to be better than yourself.”

— William Faulkner

9. “Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Life is Hard Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Depression Quotes, Hurt Quotes

10. “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

11. “Read, read, read. Read everything.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Encouraging Quotes for Students

12. “You have to write badly in order to write well.”

— William Faulkner

13. “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’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

— William Faulkner

14. “Don’t do what you can do – try what you can’t do.”

— William Faulkner

15. “If a story is in you, it has to come out.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

16. “Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything good.”

— William Faulkner

17. “Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Book Quotes

18. “Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories. The past is never dead, it is not even past.”

— William Faulkner

19. “Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Strong Quotes

20. “If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.”

— William Faulkner

21. “We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”

— William Faulkner

22. “The past is never dead. It’s not even past; it’s always part of the present.”

— William Faulkner

23. “If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Quotes About Writing

24. “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.”

— William Faulkner

25. “Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Fun Quotes

26. “I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.”

— William Faulkner

27. “Civilization begins with distillation.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Quotes About Civilization, Hipster Quotes

28. “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”

— William Faulkner

29. “Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.”

— William Faulkner

30. “People need trouble – a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it.”

— William Faulkner

31. “The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.”

— William Faulkner

32. “You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Real Quotes, History Quotes

33. “Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar...”

— William Faulkner

34. “A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.”

— William Faulkner

35. “Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Quotes About Hope

36. “I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.”

— William Faulkner

37. “Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was – only is.”

— William Faulkner

38. “Only when the clock stops does time come to life.”

— William Faulkner

39. “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”

— William Faulkner

40. “A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.”

— William Faulkner

41. “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.”

— William Faulkner

42. “Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.”

— William Faulkner

43. “Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”

— William Faulkner

44. “The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.”

— William Faulkner

45. “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.”

— William Faulkner

46. “Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.”

— William Faulkner

47. “It is the writer’s privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.”

— William Faulkner

48. “A man is the sum of his misfortunes.”

— William Faulkner

49. “Setting an example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.”

— William Faulkner

Featured in: Fun Quotes

50. “Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least.”

— William Faulkner