Book: As I Lay Dying
Quotes of Book: As I Lay Dying
He is the greatest artist the South has produced.… Indeed, through his many novels and short stories, Faulkner fights out the moral problem which was repressed after the nineteenth century {yet} for all his concern with the South, Faulkner was actually seeking out the nature of man. Thus we must turn to him for that continuity of moral purpose which made for the greatness of our classics." -RALPH ELLISON "Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well of human weakness. He knew that the understanding and the resolution of fear are a large part of the writer's reason for being." -JOHN STEINBECK "For range of effect, philosophical weight, originality of style, variety of characterization, humor, and tragic intensity, {Faulkner's works} are without equal in our time and country." -ROBERT PENN WARREN "No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner. If you want to know all you can about that heart and soul, the fiction where he put it is still right there." -EUDORA WELTY book-quoteBut my mother is a fish. Vernon seen it. He was there."Jewel's mother is a horse," Darl said."Then mine can be a fish, can't it, Darl? I said.Jewel is my brother."Then mine will have to be a horse, too," I said."Why? Darl said. "If pa is your pa, why does your ma have to be a horse just because Jewel's is?""Why does it? I said. "Why does it, Darl?"Darl is my brother."Then what is your ma, Darl?" I said."I haven't got ere one," Darl said. "Because If I had one, it is . And if it is was, it can't be . Can't it?""No," I said."Then I am not," Darl said. "Am I?""No," I said.I am. Darl is my brother."But you , Darl," I said."I know it," Darl said. "That's why I am not . is too many for one woman to foal. book-quoteThe river itself is not a hundred yards across, and pa and Vernon and Vardaman and Dewey Dell are the only things in sight not of that single monotony of desolation leaning with that terrific quality a little from right to left, as though we had reached the place where the motion of the wasted world accelerates just before the final precipice. Yet they appear dwarfed. It is as though the space between us were time: an irrevocable quality. It is as though time, no longer running straight before us in a diminishing line, now runs parallel between us like a looping string, the distance being the doubling accretion of the thread and not the interval between. The mules stand, their fore quarters already sloped a little, their rumps high. They too are breathing now with a deep groaning sound; looking back once, their gaze sweeps across us with in their eyes a wild, sad, profound and despairing quality as though they had already seen in the thick water the shape of the disaster which they could not speak and we could not see. book-quote
