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

William Faulkner

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William Faulkner
Age: 64 †
Born: 1897
Born: September 25
Died: 1962
Died: July 6
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
New Albany
Mississippi
William Cuthbert Faulkner
William Falkner
William Cuthbert Falkner
Firsts
First
Must
Like
World
Mississippi
Understand
Place
Reality

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It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books. [] It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: he made the books and he died.
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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.
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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.
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Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
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Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
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I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o'clock every day.
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My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.
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The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.
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Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.
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If a story is in you, it has to come out.
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The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
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I think that-that anyone, the painter, the musician, the writer works in a-a kind of an-an insane fury. He's demon-driven. He can get up feeling rotten, with a hangover, or with-with actual pain, and-and if he gets to work, the first thing he knows, he don't remember that pain, that hangover-he's too busy.
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And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless october, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dog and the echo of louis' voice dying away
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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.
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Gough never pretended to perfection or to sainthood - well, hardly ever. Although when he set off the metal detector at airport security, he would blame his aura.
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Love doesn't die the men and women do.
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A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
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Your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory.
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You have to write badly in order to write well.
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The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.
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