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The necessity of the idea creates its own style. The material itself dictates how it should be written.

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
Materials
Style
Written
Idea
Ideas
Dictates
Necessity
Creates
Material

More quotes by William Faulkner

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I've got to feel the pencil and see the words at the end of the pencil.
William Faulkner
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The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...
William Faulkner
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A man is the sum of his misfortunes.
William Faulkner
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Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.
William Faulkner
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The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since.
William Faulkner
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Women do have an affinity for evil, for believing that no woman is to be trusted, but that some men are too innocent to protect themselves.
William Faulkner
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A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
William Faulkner
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It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
William Faulkner
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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
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Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.
William Faulkner
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Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.
William Faulkner
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Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.
William Faulkner
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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.
William Faulkner
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Nothing can injure a man's writing if he's a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there's not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.
William Faulkner
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A man never gets anywhere if facts and his ledgers don't square.
William Faulkner
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It feels almost soft, like something to be caressed. Only gold feels that way.
William Faulkner
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I think that-that anyone, the painter, the musician, the writer works in a-a kind of an-an insane fury. He's demon-driven. He can get up feeling rotten, with a hangover, or with-with actual pain, and-and if he gets to work, the first thing he knows, he don't remember that pain, that hangover-he's too busy.
William Faulkner
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In every writer there is a certain amount of the scavenger.
William Faulkner
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To me, all human behavior is unpredictable and, considering man's frailty... and... the ramshackle universe he functions in, it's... all irrational.
William Faulkner
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What a writer's obituary should read - he wrote the books, then he died.
William Faulkner