891 Quotes by William Faulkner

I can't do nothing. Just put it off. And that don't do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain't no more than mine.

It's like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

It used to be a gentleman was known by his books; nowadays he is known by the ones he has not returned.

But this time as soon as he moved she began to fade. He stopped at once, not breathing again, motionless, willing his eyes to see that she had stopped too. But she had not stopped. She was fading, going. "Wait," he said, talking as sweet as he had ever heard his voice speak to a woman: "Den lemme go wid you, honey." But she was going.

Nothing can marry two people closer than a mutual sin in the world's eyes.

You know that if I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.