William Faulkner

“מה שעצוב באהבה הוא לא רק שאיננה בת קיימא, אלא גם שהאכזבה ממנה נשכחת במהרה.”

“המין והמוות: שער הכניסה אל העולם ושער היציאה ממנו.”

“אינני יודע מה אני חושב על דבר מסוים, עד שאני קורא את מה שכתבתי על אודותיו.”

“אולי צדקו האנשים ששמו את האהבה בספרים... היא איננה יכולה לחיות בשום מקום אחר.”

“סופר איננו מסוגל לומר את האמת, ולכן אנו מכנים את מה שהוא כותב בשם: פיקציה.”

“על הסופר ללמוד כי היסודי שבדברים הוא לפחד.”

“מה שדרוש לסופר: ניסיון, התבוננות ודמיון. לפעמים אפילו שניים ואפילו אחד מהם יכול למלא את החסר.”

“עליך לחלום ולנסות לעשות למעלה ממה שיש בכוחך; אל נא תשאף להתעלות על בני זמנך או על קודמיך, אלא נסה להתעלות על עצמך.”

“העובדות והאמת אינן היינו הך.”

“זו ארץ חופשית: בזכותם של אנשים לשלוח לי מכתבים, ובזכותי לא לקוראם.”

“ב־1955, לחיות במקום מסוים ולהתנגד לשיוויון על בסיס גזע או צבע, כמוהו כלחיות באלסקה ולהתנגד לשלג.”

“כדי להיות אדם גדול דרושים תשעים ותשעה אחוזים של עבודה.”

“כדי להבין את העולם, עליך להבין תחילה מקום כמו מיסיסיפי.”

“מי שעוקר הרים, מתחיל בליקוט אבנים.”

“It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.”

“The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.”

“The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn't really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like to think because he will spend almost any or all of it for almost anything provided it is valueless enough) but his motor-car. Because the automobile has become our national sex symbol. We cannot really enjoy anything unless we can go up an alley for it. Yet our whole background and raising and training forbids the sub rosa and surreptitious. So we have to divorce our wife today in order to remove from our mistress the odium of mistress in order to divorce our wife tomorrow in order to remove from our mistress and so on. As a result of which the American woman has become cold and and undersexed; she has projected her libido on to the automobile not only because its glitter and gadgets and mobility pander to her vanity and incapacity (because of the dress decreed upon her by the national retailers association) to walk but because it will not maul her and tousle her, get her all sweaty and disarranged. So in order to capture and master anything at all of her anymore the American man has got to make that car his own. Which is why let him live in a rented rathole though he must he will not only own one but renew it each year in pristine virginity, lending it to no one, letting no other hand ever know the last secret forever chaste forever wanton intimacy of its pedals and levers, having nowhere to go in it himself and even if he did he would not go where scratch or blemish might deface it, spending all Sunday morning washing and polishing and waxing it because in doing that he is caressing the body of the woman who has long since now denied him her bed.”

“I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.”

“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.”

“If all the businesses in town are run like country businesses, You are going to have a country town”