Quotes from William Faulkner

We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

The writer doesn't need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

Civilization begins with distillation

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.

We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid

Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.

Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what that other man or woman is doing.