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242423f
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It is because so much happens. Too much happens. That's it. Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything. That's it. That's what is so terrible. That he can bear anything, anything.
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William Faulkner |
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63e192b
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I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.
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William Faulkner |
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f5bc656
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When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.
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William Faulkner |
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039d38e
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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. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help a man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and s..
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William Faulkner |
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115074e
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I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as when he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping. And like he would be kind of proud of whatever come up to make the moving or the setting still look hard. He set there on the wagon hunched up, blinking, listening to us tell about how quick the bridge went and ho..
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William Faulkner |
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1d1cb18
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surely there is something in madness, even the demoniac, which Satan flees, aghast at his own handiwork, and which God looks on in pity..
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William Faulkner |
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d3ffb0e
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how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.
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William Faulkner |
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b75bc83
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An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder
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William Faulkner |
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22e318a
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It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair. "That was all I wanted," he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. "That was all, for thirty years. That didn't seem..
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literature
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William Faulkner |
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1e8f39c
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We shall not kill and maybe next time we even won't.
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kill
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William Faulkner |
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d34587c
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no man is ever free and probably could not bear it if he were...
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William Faulkner |
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1bd69c7
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But you cant be alive forever, and you always wear out life long before you have exhausted the possibilities of living. And all that must be somewhere; all that could not have been invented and created just to be thrown away. And the earth is shallow; there is not a great deal of it before you come to the rock. And the earth dont want to just keep things, hoard them; it wants to use them again.
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william-faulkner
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William Faulkner |
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f455775
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The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn't really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like to think because he will spend almost any or all of it for almost anything provided it is valueless enough) but his motor-car. Because the automobile has become our national sex symbol. We cannot really enjoy anything unless we can go ..
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cars
love
sex
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William Faulkner |
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a2482a9
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For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating..
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William Faulkner |
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a353f29
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Who gathers the withered rose?
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rue
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William Faulkner |
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f27bf75
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When I was a boy I first learned how much better water tastes when it has set a while in a cedar bucket. Warmish-cool, with a faint taste like the hot July wind in Cedar trees smells.
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William Faulkner |
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600fc92
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That's the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.
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William Faulkner |
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ca933ce
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When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.
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William Faulkner |
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3a756dd
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A man. All men. He will pass up a hundred chances to do good for one chance to meddle where meddling is not wanted. He will overlook and fail to see chances, opportunities, for riches and fame and welldoing, and even sometimes for evil. But he won't fail to see a chance to meddle.
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William Faulkner |
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b45c103
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They say love dies between two people. That's wrong. It doesn't die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you aren't good enough, worthy enough. It doesn't die; you're the the one that dies. It's like the ocean: if you're no good, if you begin to make a bad smell in it, it just spews you up somewhere to die. You die anyway, but I had rather drown in the ocean than be urped up onto a strip of dead beach and be dried away by the sun into a littl..
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William Faulkner |
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e6b7f50
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Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?
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William Faulkner |
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9719ed2
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It was only as he put his hand on the door that he became aware of complete silence beyond it, a silence which he at eighteen knew that it would take more than one person to make.
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William Faulkner |
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d16e972
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no man can cause more grief than the one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancesters.
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vices
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William Faulkner |
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fd91db2
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It's just incredible. It just does not explain. Or perhaps that's it: they don't explain and we are not supposed to know. We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales, we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly peop..
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William Faulkner |
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251d512
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Ninety-nine percent talent...ninety-nine percent discipline...ninety-nine percent work. He must never be satisfied with what he does. It is never as good as it can be done. 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. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to won..
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William Faulkner |
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5d02a4a
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Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.
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William Faulkner |
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49cfacd
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Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.
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men
pacifism
pacifists
war
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William Faulkner |
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1d4b973
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The whiskey died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene ...
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William Faulkner |
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2036342
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Here I am I am tired I am tired of running of having to carry my life like it was a basket of eggs
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tired
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William Faulkner |
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9c2fdc8
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I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind - and that of the minds of the ones who suffer the bereavement. The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.
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William Faulkner |
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9c9850d
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It always takes a man that never made much at any thing to tell you how to run your business, though. Like these college professors without a whole pair of socks to his name, telling you how to make a million in ten years, and a woman that couldn't even get a husband can always tell you how to raise a family.
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William Faulkner |
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d2e7a34
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Truth is one. It doesn't change. It covers all things which touch the heart - honor and pride and pity and justice and courage and love.
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William Faulkner |
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fc6bf0d
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And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad.
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William Faulkner |
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61b57fb
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At first it had been a torrent; now it was a tide, with a flow and ebb. During its flood she could almost fool them both. It was as if out of her knowledge that it was just a flow that must presently react was born a wilder fury, a fierce denial that could flag itself and him into physical experimentation that transcended imagining, carried them as though by momentum alone, bearing them without volition or plan. It was as if she knew someho..
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William Faulkner |
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3ff6337
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Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
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men
women
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William Faulkner |
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4ed248b
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It was as though, so long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe through cowardice, since all people are cowards and naturally prefer any kind of treachery because it has a bland outside.
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enabling
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William Faulkner |
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5fc268f
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They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men - some in their brushed Confederate uniforms - on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perh..
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William Faulkner |
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9f6cc72
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Idleness breeds our better virtues.
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William Faulkner |
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37252bd
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And when I think about that, I think that if nothing but being married will help a man, he's durn nigh hopeless.
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William Faulkner |
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32a9f4e
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When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.
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William Faulkner |
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a051a28
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Stars were golden unicorns neighing unheard through blue meadows.
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unicorns
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William Faulkner |
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272027c
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Sometimes I could put myself to sleep saying that over and over until after the honeysuckle got all mixed up in it the whole thing came to symbolize night and unrest I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of grey halflight 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 themselve..
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William Faulkner |
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1e9df42
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The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself, after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times.
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William Faulkner |
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311242c
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Read it if you like or don't read it if you like. Because you make so little impression, you see. You get born and you try this and you don't know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with string only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why ei..
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William Faulkner |