Quote

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not.

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
Empty
Room
Rooms
Strange
Sleep
Must
Never
Emptied
Filled

More quotes by William Faulkner

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The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means.
William Faulkner
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Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.
William Faulkner
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I learned little save that most of the deeds, good and bad both, incurring opprobrium or plaudits or reward either, within the scope of man's abilities, had already been performed and were to be learned about only from books.
William Faulkner
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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.
William Faulkner
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...It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.
William Faulkner
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Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.
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Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
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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
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The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews the artists who want to write, don't.
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Love doesn't die the men and women do.
William Faulkner
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You can't beat women anyhow and that if you are wise or dislike trouble and uproar you don't even try to.
William Faulkner
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Curiosity is a mistress whose slaves decline no sacrifice.
William Faulkner
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Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.
William Faulkner
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The poets are wrong of course […] But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.
William Faulkner
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I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail...because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
William Faulkner
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Setting an example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.
William Faulkner
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Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.
William Faulkner
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Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.
William Faulkner
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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.
William Faulkner
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A pair of jaybirds came up from nowhere, whirled up on the blast like gaudy scraps of cloth or paper and lodged in the mulberries, where they swung in raucous tilt and recover, screaming into the wind that ripped their harsh cries onward and away like scraps of paper or of cloth in turn.
William Faulkner