Friday, September 25, 2009

Meandering on and on . . .

Today is the birthday of William Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962), author. He was the recipient of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature and is oft referred to as one of the most important writers in the history of American literature. Absalom, Absalom!, is considered William Faulkner's masterpiece.

"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. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things." - William Faulkner

"Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie." - William Faulkner

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands." - William Faulkner


"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." - William Faulkner

Faulkner stamp image source (1)

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