Quotes from book
The Town

Name: The Town
Author: William Faulkner

The Town is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1957, about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi. It is the second of the "Snopes" trilogy, following The Hamlet and completed by The Mansion .

“She was bored. She loved, had capacity to love, for love, to give and accept love. Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Source: The Town

“…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.”

William Faulkner book 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.”

William Faulkner book The Town

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

“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.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 5
The Town (1957)

“…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.”

William Faulkner book 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.”

William Faulkner book 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.”

William Faulkner book The Town

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

“"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."”

William Faulkner book 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.”

William Faulkner book The Town

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

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

William Faulkner book The Town

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

“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.”

William Faulkner book The Town

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

“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.”

William Faulkner book 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)

“You don't know very much about women, do you?”

William Faulkner book The Town

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