Top 450 William Faulkner Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.”

— William Faulkner

52. “My mother is a fish.”

— William Faulkner

53. “Caddy smelled like trees.”

— William Faulkner

54. “The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.”

— William Faulkner

55. “Your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory.”

— William Faulkner

56. “Truth; that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.”

— William Faulkner

57. “I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o’clock every day.”

— William Faulkner

58. “A fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it’s liable to strike anywhere, like lightning.”

— William Faulkner

59. “Memory believes before knowing remembers.”

— William Faulkner

60. “No man can write who is not first a humanitarian.”

— William Faulkner

61. “It seems impossible for a man to learn the value of money without first having to learn to waste it.”

— William Faulkner

62. “Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”

— William Faulkner

63. “There is no was.”

— William Faulkner

64. “Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.”

— William Faulkner

65. “Fear is the most damnable, damaging thing to human personality in the whole world.”

— William Faulkner

66. “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

67. “An artist is completely amoral in that he will rob, beg, borrow, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.”

— William Faulkner

68. “All men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away.”

— William Faulkner

69. “A gentleman can live through anything.”

— William Faulkner

70. “It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.”

— William Faulkner

71. “It’s the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to, so there’s always something to wake up tomorrow morning to do.”

— William Faulkner

72. “Only a fool tries to outsmart smart people, and anyone that tries to fool fools is himself already one.”

— William Faulkner

73. “She loved him not only in spite of but because he himself was incapable of love.”

— William Faulkner

74. “Pouring out liquor is like burning books.”

— William Faulkner

75. “They killed us, but they ain’t whooped us yet.”

— William Faulkner

76. “Who gathers the withered rose?”

— William Faulkner

77. “Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.”

— William Faulkner

78. “Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.”

— William Faulkner

79. “Wonder. Go on and wonder.”

— William Faulkner

80. “Unless you’re ashamed of yourself now and then, you’re not honest.”

— William Faulkner

81. “All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born.”

— William Faulkner

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

— William Faulkner

83. “I will never lie again.”

— William Faulkner

84. “Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.”

— William Faulkner

85. “Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.”

— William Faulkner

86. “Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.”

— William Faulkner

87. “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.”

— William Faulkner

88. “At least this will be my chance to find out if I am what I think I am or if I just hope; if I am going to do what I have taught myself is right or if I am just going to wish I were.”

— William Faulkner

89. “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.”

— William Faulkner

90. “My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company’s good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.”

— William Faulkner

91. “Idleness breeds our better virtues.”

— William Faulkner

92. “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

93. “You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

— William Faulkner

94. “A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.”

— William Faulkner

95. “The writer in America isn’t part of the culture of this country. He’s like a fine dog. People like him around, but he’s of no use.”

— William Faulkner

96. “So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice...”

— William Faulkner

97. “A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune.”

— William Faulkner

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

— William Faulkner

99. “It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.”

— William Faulkner

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

— William Faulkner