William Faulkner cytaty (247 cytatów, strona 6)

Źródło: Melania Sobańska-Bondaruk, Stanisław Bogusław Lenard (oprac.), Wiek XX w źródłach, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2002, ISBN 8301127104, s. 244.

„Miłość i cierpienie to jedno i to samo: wartość miłości mierzy się sumą, jaką trzeba za nią zapłacić: i zawsze, jeśli to wypada zbyt tanio to znaczy, że człowiek oszukuje sam siebie.”

William Faulkner

„Smutne w miłości jest to, że nie tylko nie trwa ona wiecznie, ale że rozczarowania, jakie przynosi, też mijają szybko.”

William Faulkner

„Bóg przy następnym potopie posłuży się nie wodą, lecz papierem.”

William Faulkner

„Myliłam się. Przyznaję. Wierzyłam, że jeszcze są rzeczy, które mają na świecie znaczenie, i to tylko dlatego, że niegdyś je miały. Myliłam się jednakże. Nic nie ma znaczenia. Wystarczy tylko wiedzieć, że się jest, oddycha, i oddychać, i żyć.”

William Faulkner

Postać: Judith Sutpen
Absalomie, Absalomie

„Żeby pisać, trzeba mieć w sobie wielkie elementarne prawdy i kierować swoje dzieło ku jednej z nich albo ku wszystkim naraz.”

William Faulkner

„Może nic nigdy nie zdarza się tylko jeden raz i nic nigdy nie jest ostatecznie skończone.”

William Faulkner

Postać: Quentin Compson
Absalomie, Absalomie

„Drapieżność nie zawodzi, ona jest jak oddech.”

William Faulkner

„Czas gmatwał im rachunki, jak to bywa u starych, dla których cała przeszłość nie jest zwężającą się drogą, lecz ogromną, nie tkniętą właściwie przez żadną zimę łąką, od której dzieli ich tylko przesmyk ostatniego dziesięciolecia…”

William Faulkner książka A Rose for Emily

Źródło: Kwiaty dla Emilii (ang. A Rose for Emily), tłum. Tadeusz A. Malanowski

„Człowiek jest sumą swoich nieszczęść.”

William Faulkner książka Wściekłość i wrzask

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. (ang.)
Źródło: Wściekłość i wrzask (ang. The Sound and the Fury, 1929), tłum. Anna Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska

„Jeśli duch nacjonalizmu przedostaje się do literatury, to przestaje to być literatura.”

William Faulkner

„Nie należy przesadzać z demokracją. Nie chciałbym podróżować statkiem, którego kurs byłby określany głosowaniem załogi, przy czym kucharz i chłopiec okrętowy mieliby takie samo prawo głosu jak kapitan i sternik.”

William Faulkner

„Zawiść odczuwamy tylko w stosunku do kogoś, kogo uważamy za równego sobie i wywyższonego jedynie przez czysty traf, jaki naszym zdaniem – zakładając, że będziemy mieć więcej szczęścia, niż mieliśmy dotychczas – kiedyś może się przytrafić i nam samym.”

William Faulkner

„Trzeba dwojga, żeby zrobić człowieka, starczy jedno, żeby umrzeć. Tak oto świat się skończy.”

William Faulkner książka Kiedy umieram

It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end. (ang.)
Kiedy umieram
Źródło: wyd. Czytelnik, Warszawa 1968, s. 45.

„Złudzeniami można żyć dość długo i być dość szczęśliwym. Może to nawet jedyny sposób, żeby być szczęśliwym. To znaczy, kiedy się jest Polakiem i nie umie się nic prócz zakładania dynamitu pięćset stóp pod ziemią.”

William Faulkner

William Faulkner: Cytaty po angielsku

“…innocence is innocent not because it rejects but because it accepts; is innocent not because it is impervious and invulnerable to everything, but because it is capable of accepting anything and still remaining innocent; innocent because it foreknows all and therefore doesn't have to fear or be afraid.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 15
The Town (1957)

“…between what did happen and what ought to happened, I dont never have trouble picking ought.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

V. K. Ratliff in Ch. 6
The Town (1957)

“A gentleman can live through anything.”

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William Faulkner książka The Reivers

The Reivers (1962)

“The poets are wrong of course. … But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 5
The Town (1957)

“Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.”

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William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“…Stevens himself hating horses even more than dogs, rating the horse an unassailable first in loathing since though both were parasites, the dog at least had the grace to be a sycophant too; it at least fawned on you and so kept you healthily ashamed of the human race. But the real reason was, though neither the horse nor the dog ever forgot anything, the dog at least forgave you; and his, Stevens's, thought was that what the world needed was more forgiving.”

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William Faulkner książka The Mansion

Źródło: The Mansion (1959), Ch. 16

“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much that he can't get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.”

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William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“…women are not interested in truth or romance but only in facts whether they are true or not, just so they fit all the other facts.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 17; also in this chapter Gavin Stevens reflects — twice — that men are "interested in facts too".
The Town (1957)

“…even in the folly of youth we know that nothing lasts, but … even in that folly we are afraid that maybe Nothing will last, that maybe Nothing will last forever, and anything is better than Nothing.… So now, as another poet sings, That Fancy passed me by And nothing will remain; which, praise the gods, is a damned lie since, praise, O gods! Nothing cannot remain anywhere since nothing is vacuum and vacuum is paradox and unbearable and we will have nothing of it even if we would, the damned-fool poet's Nothing.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 8
The two lines quoted — not altogether accurately — are from A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896), XVIII:<p>And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain.
The Town (1957)

“…women aren't interested in the romance of dreams; they are interested in the reality of facts, they don't care what facts, let alone whether they are true or not if they just dovetail with all the other facts without leaving a saw-tooth edge.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Gavin Stevens paraphrasing Eula Varner Snopes in Ch. 15
The Town (1957)

“My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.”

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William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do — after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.”

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William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“"You don't know very much about women, do you?" she said. "Women aren't interested in poets' dreams. They are interested in facts. It doesn't even matter whether the facts are true or not, as long as they match the other facts without leaving a rough seam."”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Eula Varner Snopes to Gavin Stevens in Ch. 15
The Town (1957)

“Maybe I was completely wrong that morning when I said how women are only interested in facts because maybe men are just interested in facts too and the only difference is, women dont care whether they are facts or not just so they fit, and men dont care whether they fit or not just so they are facts.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Eula Varner Snopes to Gavin Stevens in Ch. 20
The Town (1957)

“At least wasn't nobody, no outsider, there to hear it so maybe even before next January he was able to believe hadn't none of it even been said, like miracle: what aint believed aint seen. Miracle, pure miracle anyhow, how little a man needs to outlast jest [just] about anything.”

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William Faulkner książka The Mansion

V. K. Ratliff about Gavin Stevens in Ch. 6
The Mansion (1959)

“Because women are marvellous. They stroll perfectly bland and serene through a fact that the men have been bloodying their heads against for years; whereupon you find that the fact not only wasn't important, it wasn't really there.”

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William Faulkner książka The Mansion

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 9
The Mansion (1959)

“… maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly all the time, is having to accept it.”

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William Faulkner książka Requiem for a Nun

Act 2, sc. 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=EBMFAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Maybe+the+only+thing+worse+than+having+to+give+gratitude+constantly%22+%22is+having+to+accept+it%22&pg=PA155#v=onepage <br class="br">Requiem for a Nun (1951)

“…girls, women, are not interested in romance but only facts.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Gavin Stevens to Eula Varner Snopes in Ch. 20
The Town (1957)

“… so vast, so limitless in capacity is man's imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream.”

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William Faulkner książka Requiem for a Nun

Last paragraph, Act 3, The Jail (Nor even yet quite relinquish —)
Requiem for a Nun (1951)

“Because as a rule women dont really care about facts just so they fit; it's just men that dont give a damn whether they fit or not.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Gavin Stevens to V. K. Ratliff in Ch. 24
The Town (1957)

“I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry ﬁrst, ﬁnds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.”

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William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“…life is not so much motion as an inventless repetition of motion.”

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William Faulkner książka The Mansion

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 8
The Mansion (1959)

“If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.”

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William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“She wanted to tell me. Maybe she even tried. But she couldn't. It wasn't because I was only twelve. It was because I was her child, created by her and Father because they wanted to be in bed together and nothing else would do, nobody else would do. You see? … Because to the child, he was not created by his mother's and his father's passion or capacity for it. He couldn't have been because he was there first, he came first, before the passion; he created the passion, not only it but the man and the woman who served it; his father is not his father but his son-in-law, his mother not his mother but his daughter-in-law if he is a girl. … and if a boy or a girl really is his father's and her mother's father-in-law or mother-in-law, which would make the girl her brother's mother no matter how much younger she was, then a girl with just one brother and him a twin at that, would maybe be his wife and mother too.”

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William Faulkner książka The Town

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 19; Charles Mallinson's mother, Maggie, and his uncle, Gavin Stevens, besides being their parents' only children, are twins.
The Town (1957)

“Then me too in Paris for the last two weeks, to see if the Paris of Hemingway and the Paris of Scott Fitzgerald (they were not the same ones; they merely used the same room) had vanished completely or not too.”

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William Faulkner książka The Mansion

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 9. The date is summer 1938.
The Mansion (1959)

“Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move — which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”

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William Faulkner

Paris Review interview (1958)

“He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.”

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William Faulkner

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1950)