William Faulkner Quotes

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.

At times I think and at times I am.

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist - I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don't have to solve that problem. It's up to God, if any.

How strange it is to be anything at all.

Without ego I don't know how identity works, I don't know... I need to sit down and re-read some philosophy or something.

When I sleep every night, what am I called or not called? And when I wake, who am I if I was not I while I slept?

I am me, whatever that means. I am conscious.

The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.

I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space- who else?

The problem is we think we exist.

I move, therefore I am.

We have the notion that we exist but we have no way to prove it. 'I am' is the closest foundation we can get.

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and who are we, the stories we tell ourselves are the stories that define the potentialities of our existence. We are the stories we tell ourselves.

I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.

Our nature is the mind. And the mind is our nature.

I am, therefore I'll think.

To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of to-day?

What is an "I", and why are such things found (at least so far) only in association with, as poet Russell Edson once wonderfully phrased it, "teetering bulbs of dread and dream" - that is, only in association with certain kinds of gooey lumps encased in hard protective shells mounted atop mobile pedestals that roam the world on pairs of slightly fuzzy, jointed stilts?

Sometimes I think, sometimes I am .

The ultimate question of who we are is set before us at all times and answered with every action.

You are what you are" "Which is what? I wondered

The self is known to every one but not clearly. You always exist.

Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing.