Quotes by William Faulkner

“A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances.”

“A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.”

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes.”

“A man or a woman in love feels forever young.”

“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”

“A novelist is a failed short story writer, and a short story writer is a failed poet.”

“A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth, and that is why we call what he writes fiction.”

“An artist is driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him.”

“Clocks slay time. Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels.”

“Courage is in being scared to death and saddling up anyway.”

“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.”

“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good.”

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

“I can’t believe a man is worth the sum of his hates.”

“I decline to accept the end of man.”

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

“If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, all of us.”

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die.”

“It’s not when you realize that nothing can help you—religion, pride, anything—it’s when you realize that you don’t need any help.”

“Love is a quality, not a quantity.”

“Man is born and lives in a mist.”

“Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished.”

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”

“Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.”

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth.”

“People need trouble—a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it.”

“Perhaps love is only the difference between the sum of what one expects and the sum of what one receives.”

“Perhaps they were right in putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.”

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”

“Some things you must always be unable to bear.”

“Sometimes you must pick up the pieces and start again.”

“Success is feminine and like a woman; if you chase her, she will run away.”

“The best fiction is far truer than any journalism.”

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

“The most successful fiction always has a touch of autobiography.”

“The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.”

“The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.”

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

“The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.”

“The saddest thing about love is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.”

“There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?”

“There are some things you must never stop refusing to bear.”

“There is a love which must be learned.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘was.’ If ‘was’ existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.”

“Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people.”

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

“Victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

“We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.”

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

“What’s the good of having the right to free speech if you haven’t got anything to say?”

“Women know how to hold their love. Men can only hold their fear.”

“Writing is a solitary job—that is the secret.”

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

“You can’t eat for eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours a day.”

“You should approach your work with humility. Otherwise, you will never learn.”

“You should write about what you love, what you hate, and what you are most afraid of.”