William Faulkner
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INTERVIEWER
How much of your writing is based on personal experience?
FAULKNER
I can’t say. I never counted up. Because “how much” is not important. A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination-any two of which, at times any one of which-can supply the lack of the others. With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what it caused to follow. A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can. Obviously he must use as one of his tools the environment which he knows. I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, since it came first in man’s experience and history. But since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better. That is, music would express better and simpler, but I prefer to use words, as I prefer to read rather than listen. I prefer silence to sound, and the image produced by words occurs in silence. That is, the thunder and the music of the prose take place in silence.
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INTERVIEWER
You mentioned experience, observation, and imagination as being important for the writer. Would you include inspiration?
FAULKNER
I don’t know anything about inspiration because I don’t know what inspiration is - I’ve heard about it, but I never saw it.
-- William Faulkner at The Paris Review (1956)
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INTERVIEWER
How much of your writing is based on personal experience?
FAULKNER
I can’t say. I never counted up. Because “how much” is not important. A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination-any two of which, at times any one of which-can supply the lack of the others. With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or memory or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what it caused to follow. A writer is trying to create believable people in credible moving situations in the most moving way he can. Obviously he must use as one of his tools the environment which he knows. I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, since it came first in man’s experience and history. But since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better. That is, music would express better and simpler, but I prefer to use words, as I prefer to read rather than listen. I prefer silence to sound, and the image produced by words occurs in silence. That is, the thunder and the music of the prose take place in silence.
[...]
INTERVIEWER
You mentioned experience, observation, and imagination as being important for the writer. Would you include inspiration?
FAULKNER
I don’t know anything about inspiration because I don’t know what inspiration is - I’ve heard about it, but I never saw it.
-- William Faulkner at The Paris Review (1956)
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