Quote

With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.

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
Moments
Fiction
Stories
Single
Caused
Ideas
Simply
Explain
Matter
Happened
Begins
Writing
Working
Mental
Story
Picture
Moment
Follow
Idea
Usually

More quotes by 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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The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.
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The salvation of the world is in man's suffering.
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Wonder. Go on and wonder.
William Faulkner
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Necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor and pride.
William Faulkner
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Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.
William Faulkner
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Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.
William Faulkner
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The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.
William Faulkner
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They will endure. They are better than we are. Stronger than we are. Their vices are vices aped from white men or that white men and bondage have taught them: improvidence and intemperance and evasion-not laziness: evasion: of what white men had set them to, not for their aggrandizement or even comfort but his own.
William Faulkner
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The Swiss are not a people so much as a neat, clean, quite solvent business.
William Faulkner
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It's because I'm alone.. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.
William Faulkner
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When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.
William Faulkner
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Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.
William Faulkner
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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.
William Faulkner
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When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.
William Faulkner
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Your illusions are a part of you like your bones and flesh and memory.
William Faulkner
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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.
William Faulkner
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It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.
William Faulkner
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The only rule I have is to quit while it’s still hot. Never write yourself out. Always quit when it’s going good. Then it’s easier to take it up again. If you exhaust yourself, then you’ll get into a dead spell and you’ll have trouble with it.
William Faulkner
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You don’t love because: you love despite not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
William Faulkner