Read, read, read. Read everything

“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.”
― William Faulkner

“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.”
― William Faulkner

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― William Faulkner

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
― William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches & Public Letters

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

“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.”
― William Faulkner

“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
― William Faulkner, The Wild Palms