William Faulkner

"If a story is in you, it has to come out."

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

"You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults."

"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth."

"The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten."

"I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are."

"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work."

"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window."

"Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing."

"In writing, you must kill all your darlings."

"The best fiction is far more true than any journalism."

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good."

"A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid."

"You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore."

"A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid."

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."