William Faulkner
3 books by William Faulkner to read free, each with its best passages and lines, and the best quotes from all of them below.
Where to start
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As I Lay Dying
After a woman in rural Mississippi dies, her husband and five children begin an arduous journey to convey her coffin back to her hometown.
57,529 words, about 4 hours
Then
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The Sound and the Fury
A once-prominent Mississippi family decays and disintegrates over the first thirty years of the twentieth century.
97,245 words, about 7 hours
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Soldiers’ Pay
American soldiers returning from the First World War meet a scarred and lethargic comrade and help him reach home.
90,107 words, about 6 hours
William Faulkner quotes
Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.
Caddy smelled like trees and like when she says we were asleep.
“Think of something far, far away, and drink fast,” he advised.
It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.
Show me the man what aint going to die, bless Jesus.
Food for the belly, and winter, though spring was somewhere in the world, from the south blown up like forgotten music.
He looked like a drowned puppy, in them overalls, without no hat, splashed up to his knees where he had walked them four miles in the mud.
My name been Dilsey since fore I could remember and it be Dilsey when they’s long forgot me.
She was dark. Had Gilligan and Lowe ever seen an Aubrey Beardsley, they would have known that Beardsley would have sickened for her: he had drawn her so often dressed in peacock hues, white and slim and depraved among meretricious trees and impossible marble fountains.
In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, you are not.
The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
“Ah, boy, there is nothing after youth’s own heart: youth has no heart.”
How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.
The place was full of ticking, like crickets in September grass, and I could hear a big clock on the wall above his head.
“Oh, I like anyone who believes there may be something he doesn’t know,” she replied without interest.
It makes a neater job.
Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; He is a Kentuckian too.
Whenever he was among flowers he always felt as if he had entered a room full of women: he was always conscious of his body, of his walk, feeling as though he trod in sand.
It’s like a man that’s let everything slide all his life to get set on something that will make the most trouble for everybody he knows.
Spaced and peaceful and serene, with that quality of autumn always in bells even in the month of brides.