15 William Faulkner Quotes on Writing

William Faulkner quotes on writing

4. The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

5. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal 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. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

14. Dilsey stroked Ben's head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow. He wailed quietly, unhurriedly. 'Hush,' Dilsey said. 'Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now.' He wailed quietly and steadily.

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

35. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

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

46. A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

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.

53. I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

54. I'm trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period.

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

58. Perhaps they were right in putting love into books... it could not live anywhere else.

59. Read, read, read. Read everything- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

67. Kill your darlings.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.