Quote

A writer strives to express a universal truth in the way that rings the most bells in the shortest amount of time.

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
Time
Rings
Express
Strive
Universal
Writer
Strives
Amount
Shortest
Truth
Strife
Way
Bells

More quotes by 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
Image
Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.
William Faulkner
Image
I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.
William Faulkner
Image
It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.
William Faulkner
Image
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.
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
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
...thinking as he had thought before and would think again and as every other man has thought: how false the most profound book turns out to be when applied to life.
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
Image
As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.
William Faulkner
Image
Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner
Image
This is a free country. Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.
William Faulkner
Image
In writing, you must kill all your darlings.
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
I don't suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don't have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear.
William Faulkner
Image
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
Image
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.
William Faulkner
Image
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
William Faulkner
Image
We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.
William Faulkner
Image
War is an episode, a crisis, a fever the purpose of which is to rid the body of fever. So the purpose of a war is to end the war.
William Faulkner