William Faulkner Quotes

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

William Faulkner

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain

William Faulkner

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain

William Faulkner

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one... 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

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

William Faulkner

People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.

William Faulkner

The past is never dead, it is not even past.

William Faulkner

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