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William Faulkner Quotes and Quotations
Too much happens ... Man performs, engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. 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 Swiss are not a people so much as a neat, clean, quite solvent business. The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree. One of the saddest things is, the only thing a man can do for 8 hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat 8 hours a day nor drink for 8 hours a day, nor make love for 8 hours. When ideas come, I write them; when they don't come, I don't. Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. The past is never dead-it is not even past. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. Fear is the most damnable, damaging thing to human personality in the whole world. We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid. 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. All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. I decline to accept the end of men... 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. |