Quote

They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

William Faulkner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Men
Liar
Life
Deceiving
Deceives
Liars
Credence
Lies
Veracity
Whose
Quickest
Lying
Chronic
Often
Deceive
Find
Practiced

More quotes by William Faulkner

Image
She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.
William Faulkner
Image
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.
William Faulkner
Image
The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.
William Faulkner
Image
She loved him not only in spite of but because he himself was incapable of love.
William Faulkner
Image
I will never lie again.
William Faulkner
Image
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
Image
War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy.
William Faulkner
Image
Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written.
William Faulkner
Image
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
Image
The writer in America isn't part of the culture of this country. He's like a fine dog. People like him around, but he's of no use.
William Faulkner
Image
I don't know anything about inspiration because I don't know what inspiration is I've heard about it, but I never saw it.
William Faulkner
Image
He is thinking quietly: I should not have got out of the habit of prayer.
William Faulkner
Image
I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.
William Faulkner
Image
And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.
William Faulkner
Image
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
Image
Truth that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.
William Faulkner
Image
It wasn't until the Nobel Prize that they really thawed out. They couldn't understand my books, but they could understand $30,000.
William Faulkner
Image
Memory believes before knowing remembers. [Light in August]
William Faulkner
Image
A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can.
William Faulkner
Image
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.
William Faulkner