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Book: Light in August
Quotes of Book: Light in August

William Faulkner _ Light in August
He turned the pages in steady progression, though now and then he would seem to linger upon one page, one line, perhaps one word. He would not look up then. He would not move, apparently arrested and held immobile by a single word which had perhaps not yet impacted, his whole being suspended by the single trivial combination of letters in quiet and sunny space, so that hanging motionless and without physical weight he seemed to watch the slow flowing of time beneath him, thinking All I wanted was peace thinking,
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
She has no mother because fatherblood hates with love and pride, but motherblood with hate loves and cohabits.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
It is the man who all his life has been self-convicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
What he was now seeing was the street lonely, savage, and cool. That was it: cool; he was thinking, saying aloud to himself sometimes, "I better move. I better get away from here."But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
When it's a matter of not-do, I reckon a man can trust himself for advice. But when it comes to a matter of doing, I reckon a fellow had better listen to all the advice he can get.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
Then the town was sorry with being glad, as people sometimes are sorry for those whom they have at last forced to do as they wanted them to.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
I mind how I said to you once that there is a price for being good the same as for being bad; a cost to pay. And it's the good men that cant deny the bill when it comes around. They cant deny it for the reason that there aint any way to make them pay it, like a honest man that gambles. The bad men can deny it; that's why dont anybody expect them to pay on sight or any other time. But the good cant. Maybe it takes longer to pay for being good than for being bad.
book-quote price goodness
William Faulkner _ Light in August
I reckon that being good is about the easiest thing in the world for a lazy man.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
A man will talk about how he'd like to escape from living folks. but it's the dead folks that do him the damage. It's the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don't try to hold him, that he cant escape from
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
It does not take long. Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated lusts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful. It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud. It is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to not understand.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
At first it had been a torrent; now it was a tide, with a flow and ebb. During its flood she could almost fool them both. It was as if out of her knowledge that it was just a flow that must presently react was born a wilder fury, a fierce denial that could flag itself and him into physical experimentation that transcended imagining, carried them as though by momentum alone, bearing them without volition or plan. It was as if she knew somehow that time was short, that autumn was almost upon her, without knowing yet the exact significance of autumn. It seemed to be instinct alone: instinct physical and instinctive denial of the wasted years. Then the tide would ebb. Then they would be stranded as behind a dying mistral, upon a spent and satiate beach, looking at one another like strangers, with hopeless and reproachful {on his part with weary: on hers with despairing} eyes.
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William Faulkner _ Light in August
The whiskey died away in time and was renewed and died again, but the street ran on. From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene ...
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