Quote

The artist is still a little like the old court jester. He's supposed to speak his vicious paradoxes with some sense in them, but he isn't part of whatever the fabric is that makes a nation.

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
Sense
Paradox
Makes
Supposed
Stills
Court
Part
Nation
Still
Nations
Jester
Littles
Whatever
Paradoxes
Little
Speak
Vicious
Like
Artist
Fabric

More quotes by William Faulkner

Image
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.
William Faulkner
Image
And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless october, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dog and the echo of louis' voice dying away
William Faulkner
Image
Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport he is a Kentuckian too.
William Faulkner
Image
She was the captain of her soul
William Faulkner
Image
I will never lie again.
William Faulkner
Image
No battle is ever won ... victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
William Faulkner
Image
To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.
William Faulkner
Image
It was like something you have dreaded and feared and dodged for years until it seemed like all your life, then despite everything it happened to you and all it was was just pain, all it did was hurt and so it was all over, all finished, all right.
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
It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.
William Faulkner
Image
The writer's only responsibility is to his art...If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.
William Faulkner
Image
Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written.
William Faulkner
Image
Living is one constant and perpetual instant when the arras-veil before what-is-to-be hangs docile and even glad to the lightest naked thrust if we had dared, were brave enough (not wise enough: no wisdom needed here) to make the rending gash.
William Faulkner
Image
If there was anything at all in the Book, anything of hope and peace for His blind and bewildered spawn which He had chosen above all others to offer immortality, THOU SHALT NOT KILL must be it.
William Faulkner
Image
Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.
William Faulkner
Image
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
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
Had Passion and Purity never encountered, Tenderness had never come into the world.
William Faulkner
Image
Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.
William Faulkner
Image
Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner