William Faulkner

Caddy smelled like trees.

— William Faulkner

Who gathers the withered rose?

— William Faulkner

“My mother is a fish.”

— William Faulkner

Idleness breeds our better virtues.

— William Faulkner

My, my. A body does get around.

— William Faulkner

I will never lie again.

— William Faulkner

I decline to accept the end of man.

— William Faulkner

“now i can get them teeth”

— william faulkner

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.

— William Faulkner

I don't want money badly enough to work for it.

— William Faulkner

“But I can try it. I can try to do it.”

— William Faulkner

“On the instant when we come to realize that tragedy is second-hand.”

— William Faulkner

“And he was not old enough to talk and say nothing at the same time.”

— William Faulkner

No man can write who is not first a humanitarian

— William Faulkner

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

— William Faulkner

I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.

— William Faulkner

He is thinking quietly: I should not have got out of the habit of prayer.

— William Faulkner

“I can stand on my own feet; I don't need any man's mahogany desk to prop me up”

— William Faulkner

So long as the deceit ran along quiet and monotonous, all of us let ourselves be deceived, abetting it unawares or maybe…

— William Faulkner

A fellow gets to thinking. About all the sorrow and afflictions in this world; how it's liable to strike anywhere, like lightning.

— William Faulkner

“In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior; in America, it's an excuse for a form of behavior.”

— William Faulkner

My ideal job? Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

— William Faulkner

Landlord of a bordello! The company's good and the mornings are quiet, which is the best time to write.

— William Faulkner

“Because always,’ he thinks, ‘when anything gets to be a habit, it also manages to get a right good distance away from…

— William Faulkner

“I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they…

— William Faulkner

“It's not four days ago I find a bastard squatting here, asking me if I read books. Like he would jump me…

— William Faulkner

The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about…

— William Faulkner

Well, Bud," he said, looking at me, "I'll be damned if you don't go to a lot of trouble to have your…

— William Faulkner

“Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels;…

— William Faulkner

It's the most satisfying occupation man has discovered yet, because you never can quite do it as well as you want to,…

— William Faulkner

Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow…

— William Faulkner

“I reckon I'll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my life, but thank God I won't ever…

— William Faulkner

“The river itself is not a hundred yards across, and pa and Vernon and Vardaman and Dewey Dell are the only things…

— William Faulkner

God created man and He created the world for him to live in and I reckon He created the kind of world…

— William Faulkner

“They continued to jeer at him, but he said nothing more. He leaned on the rail, looking down at the trout which…

— William Faulkner

…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things…

— William Faulkner

“That night they camped, in a grove of oaks and beeches where a spring ran. The nights were still cool and they…

— William Faulkner

“Like a long sighing of wind in trees it begins, then they sweep into sight, borne now upon a cloud of phantom…

— William Faulkner

When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe,…

— William Faulkner

Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom.…

— William Faulkner