Quotes by William Faulkner

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.

"Our tragedy is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it... the basest of all things is to be afraid."

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."

"Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly is having to accept it."

"Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything."

"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work."

"If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything."

"I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from."

"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."

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

"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."