A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction. William Faulkner More Quotes by William Faulkner More Quotes From William Faulkner It is assumed that anyone who makes a million dollars has a unique gift, though he might have made it off some useless gadget. William Faulkner gadgetsdollarsunique You can't. You just have to. William Faulkner You like orchids?... Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption. William Faulkner orchidssleepmen 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 writingmorningmen Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire. William Faulkner dustdesiremen It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000. William Faulkner understandingliteraturebook People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too. William Faulkner sinmatterpeople Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world. William Faulkner plasticlos-angelesworld The necessity of the idea creates its own style. The material itself dictates how it should be written. William Faulkner styleshouldideas The only rule I have is to quit while it’s still hot. Never write yourself out. Always quit when it’s going good. Then it’s easier to take it up again. If you exhaust yourself, then you’ll get into a dead spell and you’ll have trouble with it. William Faulkner quittinghotwriting The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on. William Faulkner selfwarenemy There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality. William Faulkner maelstromrocksreality People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can't know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do -after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world's anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty. William Faulkner strongmenchildren In my opinion it's a shame that there is so much work in the world. William Faulkner shameopinionworld I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them, you can't stand a fact up, you've got to prop it up, and when you move to one side a little and look at it from that angle, it's not thick enough to cast a shadow in that direction. William Faulkner shadowlooksmoving A man is the sum of his misfortunes. William Faulkner misfortunesmen Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing. William Faulkner eyemenbelieve Idleness breeds our better virtues. William Faulkner idlenessvirtue The past isn't over. It isn't even past. William Faulkner over-itpast …I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light 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 themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who. William Faulkner lightlyingthinking
