70 quotes
It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.
As I Lay Dying (1930)
"Civilization," mused Bill once, "started with distillation."
Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Is Robert Ingersoll telling me that for twenty years I have leaned upon a reed no stronger than myself?
Beyond (1933)
Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what the other man or woman is doing.
Light in August (1932)
Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.
The Sound and the Fury (1929)
They say love dies between two people. That's wrong. It doesn't die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you are not good enough, worthy enough. It doesn't die; you're the one that dies.
The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (1939)
... when she became not then half of memory became not and if I become not then all of remembering will cease to be.—Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief.
The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (1939)
There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it's the risk, the gamble. In any event it's a thing I need.
A gentleman can live through anything.
The Reivers (1962)
I am beginning to see the first sign of my increasing age: I dont like to know that my orders have been disobeyed, even when I knew when I gave them that they would be.
Go Down, Moses (1942)
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...
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
Paris Review interview (1958)
Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.
Paris Review interview (1958)
Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
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.
The Town (1957)
He recognised its voice. It was the young hound which even a year ago had had no judgment and which, by the lights of the other hounds anyway, still had none. Maybe that’s what courage is, he thought.
Go Down, Moses (1942)
Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying lightly in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.
...a mule will work for you ten years for the privilege of kicking you once.
The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (1939)