891 Quotes by William Faulkner

And older still, he might have divined the true reason: that the element of fire spoke to some deep mainspring of his father’s being, as the element of steel or of powder spoke to other men, as the one weapon for the preservation of integrity.

And so if Cash nails the box up, she is not a rabbit.

Younger citizens of the town do not know him at all save as a tall, apparently strong and healthy man who loafs in a brooding, saturnine fashion wherever he will be allowed, never exactly accepted by any group.

Then it wasn’t and she was, and now it is and she wasn’t.

Who owned no property and never desired to since the earth was no man’s but all men’s, as light and air and weather were.

The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don’t.

He had been too successful, you see; his was that solitude of contempt and distrust which success brings to him who gained it because he was strong instead of merely lucky.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.

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.