8 William Faulkner Quotes on Creativity

William Faulkner quotes on creativity

11. The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling 'Kilroy was here' on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

28. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency : to get the book written.

33. A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

34. The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.

39. If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, all of us.

47. A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

48. A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

67. Kill your darlings.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.