William Faulkner: Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He kno...

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

William Faulkner

honesty truth lying

The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

William Faulkner

taken drama past

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

William Faulkner

motivational positive inspirational

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.

William Faulkner

motivational inspirational life

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

study epic writing

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

William Faulkner

reality world firsts

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

William Faulkner

now-and-then honesty life

Don't do what you can do - try what you can't do.

William Faulkner

can-do trying

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

William Faulkner

butterfly light air

If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green... If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't.

William Faulkner

color blue children

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

William Faulkner

patriotic 4th-of-july freedom

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be-curiosity-to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not.

William Faulkner

writing men thinking

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

William Faulkner

numbness pain depression

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

William Faulkner

sweet memories past

So, never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.

William Faulkner

honesty men lying

The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

William Faulkner

women cat beautiful

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

William Faulkner

alaska equality life

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

William Faulkner

faults virtue love

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

William Faulkner

bones flesh memories

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat...nor make love for eight hours...

William Faulkner

eight work men

Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall - Kilroy was here - that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see.