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William Faulkner citations
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William Faulkner est un romancier et nouvelliste américain, né William Cuthbert Falkner le 25 septembre 1897 à New Albany, dans l'État du Mississippi, et mort le 6 juillet 1962 à Byhalia dans le même État. Publié à partir des années 1920, il reçoit le prix Nobel de littérature en 1949, alors qu'il est encore relativement peu connu.

Il est essentiellement connu pour ses romans et ses nouvelles, mais il a aussi publié des poèmes, des ouvrages de littérature d'enfance et de jeunesse et a travaillé occasionnellement comme scénariste pour le cinéma.

Faulkner, qui a situé la plupart de ses récits dans son état natal du Mississippi, est l'un des écrivains du Sud les plus marquants, aux côtés de Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams et Carson McCullers. Au-delà de cette appartenance à la culture sudiste, il est considéré comme un des plus grands écrivains américains de tous les temps et un écrivain majeur du XXe siècle, qui a exercé une grande influence sur les générations suivantes grâce à son apport novateur.

Ses romans les plus connus sont Le Bruit et la Fureur , Tandis que j'agonise , Sanctuaire , Lumière d'août et Absalon, Absalon ! , souvent considéré comme l'un des plus grands chefs-d'œuvre de la littérature universelle. Wikipedia  

✵ 25. septembre 1897 – 6. juillet 1962
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner: 232   citations 1   J'aime

William Faulkner citations célèbres

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“Si j'avais le choix entre l'expérience de la douleur et rien, je choisirais la douleur.”

William Faulkner

“Je me rappelais que mon père avait coutume de dire que le but de la vie c'est de se préparer à rester mort très longtemps.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, William Faulkner, Gallimard, 1966, 183, 1930, Du monde entier, Maurice-Edgar Coindreau
Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

“La grange était encore rouge, mais ce n'était plus une grange, maintenant. Elle était écroulée et le rouge montait en tourbillons. La grange s'en est allée, en tourbillons de petites choses rouges, vers le ciel et les étoiles. Et les étoiles ont reculé.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

“L’homme qui proclame que ses aïeux ne l’intéressent pas est seulement un peu moins vain que celui qui fonde toutes ses actions sur la supériorité de sa race.”

William Faulkner livre Sartoris

Sartoris, 1929

“Le soir, après la sortie de l'école, quand le dernier était parti avec son petit nez morveux, au lieu de rentrer à la maison, je descendais la colline jusqu'à la source où je pouvais trouver le calme et les haïr.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

“Des fois, je ne sais pas trop si on a le droit de dire qu'un homme est fou ou non. Des fois, je crois qu'il n'y a personne de complètement fou et personne de complètement sain tant que la majorité n'a pas décidé dans un sens ou dans l'autre. C'est pas tant la façon dont un homme agit que la façon dont la majorité le juge quand il agit ainsi.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

William Faulkner Citations

“Lui aussi avait un mot. Il appelait ça l'amour. Mais il y avait longtemps que j'étais habituée aux mots. Je savais que ce mot était comme les autres, rien qu'une forme pour combler un vide.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

amour , formation

“Les arbres ressemblent aux poulets quand ils ébouriffent leurs plumes dans la poussière fraîche, les jours de grande chaleur. Si je saute de la véranda, je tomberai là où le poisson se trouvait, le poisson tout coupé maintenant en morceaux de non-poisson.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

poisson , arbre

“Notre frère Darl est enfermé dans un cabanon à Jackson. Et là, ses mains sales légèrement posées dans les paisibles intervalles des barreaux, il regarde au dehors, l'écume aux lèvres.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

“Et puis, on n'est pas au monde pour avoir une vie facile. Il n'y aurait pas de raison pour être bon et mourir.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

vie , monde

“Et, pendant ce temps-là, John Sartoris dormait parmi les chérubins guerriers au sein de l’inutile et vaine gloire d’on ne savait quel Dieu qu’il n’avait pas dédaigné de reconnaître.”

William Faulkner livre Sartoris

Sartoris, 1929

temps , Dieu

“Ma mère n'est pas dans la boîte. Ma mère ne sent pas comme ça. Ma mère est un poisson.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

mère , poisson , Boîte

“Si on pouvait tout simplement se défaire dans le temps. Ce serait agréable. Ce serait agréable si on pouvait tout simplement se défaire dans le temps.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

temps , agréable

“Je sais maintenant que ce qui fait d'un homme un imbécile, c'est son inaptitude à suivre même les bons conseils qu'il se donne à lui-même.”

William Faulkner

fr

hommes

“Le passé ne meurt jamais. Il n'est même pas passé.”

William Faulkner

The past is never dead. It's not even past.
en
Dans Requiem pour une nonne.

“Comme nos vies se défont dans le vide et le silence! Gestes las qu'avec lassitude on répète, échos de vieilles contraintes tirés par des bras sans mains d'instruments sans cordes. Au coucher du soleil, nous prenons des attitudes furieuses, avec des gestes morts de poupées.”

William Faulkner livre Tandis que j'agonise

Tandis que j'agonise, 1930

silence , soleil , vie , mort

“Dans trois cents ans, ils seront à notre niveau, et la guerre des races sera terminée, pas avant.”

William Faulkner

fr

guerre

William Faulkner: Citations en anglais

“…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 livre 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 livre The Town

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

“A gentleman can live through anything.”

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William Faulkner livre 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 livre The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 5
The Town (1957)

“…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 livre The Mansion

Source: 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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
Requiem for a Nun (1951)

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

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William Faulkner livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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 livre 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)

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat....”

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William Faulkner

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1950)

“It was just noon that Saturday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man.”

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William Faulkner livre Intruder in the Dust

The opening sentence of the novel, Ch. 1
Intruder in the Dust (1948)

“This Delta, he thought: This Delta. This land which man has deswamped and denuded and derivered in two generations so that white men can own plantations and commute every night to Memphis and black men own plantations and ride in jim crow cars to Chicago to live in millionaires’ mansions on Lakeshore Drive, where white men rent farms and live like niggers and niggers crop on shares and live like animals, where cotton is planted and grows man-tall in the very cracks of the sidewalks, and usury and mortgage and bankruptcy and measureless wealth, Chinese and African and Aryan and Jew, all breed and spawn together until no man has time to say which is which nor cares…. No wonder the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution! he thought: The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge.”

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William Faulkner livre Go Down, Moses

Delta Autumn (p. 347)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

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