William Faulkner

The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.

Don't try to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

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.

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.

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.

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.

Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.

Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.

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