William Faulkner Quote
I lied, I said. ...I know it, he said.Then do something about it. Do anything, just so it's something.I cant, he said.There aint anything to do? Not anything?I didn't say that, Grandfather said. I said I couldn't. You can.What? I said. How can I forget it? Tell me how to.You cant, he said. Nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable.Then what can I do?Live with it, Grandfather said.Live with it? You mean, forever? For the rest of my life? Not ever to get rid of it? Never? I cant. Dont you see that I cant?Yes you can, he said. You will. A gentleman always does. A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn't say No though he knew he should.
I lied, I said. ...I know it, he said.Then do something about it. Do anything, just so it's something.I cant, he said.There aint anything to do? Not anything?I didn't say that, Grandfather said. I said I couldn't. You can.What? I said. How can I forget it? Tell me how to.You cant, he said. Nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable.Then what can I do?Live with it, Grandfather said.Live with it? You mean, forever? For the rest of my life? Not ever to get rid of it? Never? I cant. Dont you see that I cant?Yes you can, he said. You will. A gentleman always does. A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn't say No though he knew he should.
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About William Faulkner
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep adapted from The Big Sleep, a novel by Raymond Chandler; the former film, adapted from a novel by Ernest Hemingway, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew upon the publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".