The Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

But then I suppose it takes at least one hour to lose time in, who has been longer than history getting into the mechanical progression of it.

any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man

They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.

When you opened the door a bell tinkled, but just once, high and clear and small in the neat obscurity above the door, as though it were gauged and tempered to make that single clear small sound so as not to wear the bell out nor to require the expenditure of too much silence in restoring it

she looked at me then everything emptied out of her eyes and they looked like the eyes in statues blank and unseeing and serene

“You may have hit him. I may have looked away just then or blinked or something. He boxed the hell out of you. He boxed you all over the place. What did you want to fight him with your fists for? You goddam fool.

“Sure,” Shreve said. “If you cant be a Bland, the next best thing is to commit adultery with one or get drunk and fight him, as the case may be.” “Quite right,” Spoade said. “But I didn’t know Quentin was drunk.” “He wasn’t,” Shreve said. “Do you have to be drunk to want to hit that son of a bitch?”

“He’s my own brother,” Mother says. “He’s the last Bascomb. When we are gone there wont be any more of them.” “That’ll be hard on somebody, I guess,” I says.

“Then you’re a fool,” I says. “Well,” he says. “I dont spute dat neither. Ef dat uz a crime, all chain-gangs wouldn’t be black.”