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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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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
Really
Simple
Poets
Always
Natural
Instinct
Hate
Poet
Speak
Interested
Facts
Courses
True
Course
Truth
Almost
Exalted
Even
Wrong
Terrified

More quotes by William Faulkner

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Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?
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Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.
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What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.
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I draw no petty social lines. A man to me is a man, wherever I find him.
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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.
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A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.
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The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
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I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.
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All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.
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I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone.
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If a story is in you, it has to come out.
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A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.
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She wouldn't say what we both knew. 'The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it? But you know it is true now. I can almost tell you the day when you knew it is true. Why won't you say it, even to yourself?' She will not say it.
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I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.
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I never promise a woman anything nor let her know what I'm going to give her. That's the only way to manage them. Always keep them guessing. If you cant think of any other way to surprise them, give them a bust in the jaw.
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...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.
William Faulkner
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A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.
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We have all heard what we wanted to hear! Truth that sounds right to our ears!
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By artist I mean of course everyone who has tried to create something which was not here before him, with no other tools and material than the uncommer-ciable ones of the human spirit.
William Faulkner
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I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!
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