As I Lay Dying

by William Faulkner

The nihilists say it is the end; the fundamentalists, the beginning; when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town.

“It’s like a man that’s let everything slide all his life to get set on something that will make the most trouble for everybody he knows.”

I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

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.

One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

eternity is a fearsome thing to face:

If you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time.

“Jefferson used to be a kind of Old Doctors’ Home for them. But business started falling off and folks stayed so well until one day they found out that the women wouldn’t never get sick at all. So they run all the old doctors out and got us young good-looking ones that the women would like and then the women begun to get sick again and so business picked up. They’re doing that all over the country.