When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't. William Faulkner More Quotes by William Faulkner More Quotes From William Faulkner That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing - from reading. William Faulkner craftsreadingwriting I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it. William Faulkner writingpeoplethinking 'I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop. William Faulkner writingtalkingmen I listen to the voices. William Faulkner voice I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions. William Faulkner language-wordswritingjoy What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died. William Faulkner obituaryshouldbook We will have to choose not between color nor race nor religion nor between East and West either, but simply between being slaves and being free. And we will have to choose completely and for good; the time is already past now when we can choose a little of each, a little of both. We can choose a state of slavedom, and if we are powerful enough to be among the top two or three or ten, we can have a certain amount of license - until someone more powerful rises and has us machine-gunned against a cellar wall. William Faulkner wallpowerfulwisdom Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. William Faulkner pridehonorbook Caddy smelled like trees. William Faulkner tree A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can. William Faulkner tryingpeoplemoving The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He's supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn't part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation. William Faulkner fabricartistlittles A hack writer who would have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tried out a few of the old proven 'sure-fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy. William Faulkner colorfireeurope Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. William Faulkner bricklayingsurgerytechnique Let the past abolish the past when -- and if -- it can substitute something better. William Faulkner something-bettersubstitutespast He made the earth first and peopled it with dumb creatures, and then He created man to be His overseer on the earth and to hold suzerainty over the earth and the animals on it in His name, not to hold for himself and his descendants inviolable title forever, generation after generation, to the oblongs and squares of the earth, but to hold the earth mutual and intact in the communal anonymity of brotherhood, and all the fee He asked was pity and humility and sufferance and endurance and the sweat of has face for bread. William Faulkner humilityanimalmen It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly. William Faulkner prooflustmen The reason I don't like interviews is that I seem to react violently to personal questions. If the questions are about the work, I try to answer them. When they are about me, I may answer or I may not, but even if I do, if the same question is asked tomorrow, the answer may be different. William Faulkner differentanswerstrying War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war. William Faulkner feverpurposewar You're looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider. William Faulkner legsnamessleep Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down. William Faulkner valleysdespairlust
