William Faulkner Quotes

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless.

It's been my goal to work as much as possible, and be as unknown as possible.

I want them to forget me.

Everyone goes To L.A. to be noticed. I went there to be completely invisible.

I don't actually think about going down in history.

The life of fame was never meant for me.

Most writers want to share their essay or book much too quickly. Those who accept the pain of hard work and revising are those who get published.

Before history is written down in books, it is written in courage.

My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world.

Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him news of a legacy; labor turns out at six, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence.

There are so many people who have lived and died before you. You will never have a new problem; you're not going to ever have a new problem. Somebody wrote the answer down in a book somewhere.

People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.

Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.

Who builds a church to God and not to fame, Will never mark the marble with his name.

Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame - to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell.

O thou who art able to write a book which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner.

History is written by winners, so most history books are about people who win.

If I should labor through daylight and dark, Consecrate, valorous, serious, true, Then on the world I may blazon my mark; And what if I don't, and what if I do?

It's time to float on the waters of the night. Time to wrap my arms around this book and press it to my chest, life preserver in a seat of unremarkable men and women anonymous faces on the street, a hundred thousand unalphabitized things a million forgotten hours.

So here they are, the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals riding the outposts of the nation, from Fort Reno to Fort Apache, from Sheridan to Stark. They were all the same. Men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.

She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.

You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.

My aim is to go down in history as one of the best.

You can spend your life watching other people win or beat your name into history.

For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!