Quote

There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality.

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
Reality
Might
Maelstrom
Cling
Unbearable
Rock
Rocks
Single

More quotes by William Faulkner

Image
I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie
William Faulkner
Image
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!
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
We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.
William Faulkner
Image
No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.
William Faulkner
Image
It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread an not the interval between.
William Faulkner
Image
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
Image
If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.
William Faulkner
Image
Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories. The past is never dead, it is not even past.
William Faulkner
Image
Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.
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
You can't. You just have to.
William Faulkner
Image
Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.
William Faulkner
Image
The whiskey died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene.
William Faulkner
Image
Thank God you can flee, can escape from that massy five-foot-thick maggot-cheesy solidarity which overlays the earth, in which men and women in couples are ranked like ninepins.
William Faulkner
Image
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
William Faulkner
Image
A man. All men. He will pass up a hundred chances to do good for one chance to meddle where meddling is not wanted. He will overlook and fail to see chances, opportunities, for riches and fame and welldoing, and even sometimes for evil. But he won't fail to see a chance to meddle.
William Faulkner
Image
You could do so much for me if you just would. If you just knew. I am I and you are you and I know it and you don't know it and you could do so much for me if you just would and if you just would then I could tell you and then nobody would have to know it except you and me.
William Faulkner
Image
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
Image
The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.
William Faulkner