Quotes from William Faulkner

It's because so much happens. Too much happens. That's it. Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything. That's it.

My mother is a fish.

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.

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

Memory believes before knowing remembers. [Light in August]

If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

There is no was.

It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.

A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.