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Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing.

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
Enough
Fellows
Believe
Eyes
Would
Upon
Men
Eye
Woman
Women
Motivate
Littles
Believes
Little
Mad

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Only the peak feels so sound and stable that the beginning of the falling is hidden for a little while.
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I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.
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I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
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That's the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.
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There were many things I could do for two or three days and earn enough money to live on for the rest of the month. By temperament I'm a vagabond and a tramp.
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The past isn't over. It isn't even past.
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The most important thing is insight, that is to be - curious - to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.
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The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.
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any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man
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No battle is ever won ... victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
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Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich.
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When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there's nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.
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People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it.
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The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself
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Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.
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Civilization begins with distillation
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Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.
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When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever.
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We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
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I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.
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