William Faulkner Quotes

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all. William Faulkner

Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder. William Faulkner

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. William Faulkner

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. William Faulkner

Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other. William Faulkner

The past is not dead. It is not even past. William Faulkner

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you. William Faulkner

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done. William Faulkner

A man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t. William Faulkner

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