William Faulkner’s “Light in August” Quotes (22 Quotes)

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.

And I reckon them that are good must suffer for it the same as them that are bad.

She was the captain of her soul

Dear God, let me be damned a little longer, a little while.

Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.

He never denied it. He never did anything. He never acted like either a nigger or a white man. That was it. That was what made the folks so mad.

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 ...

He thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself. But the street ran on: catlike, one place was the same as another to him. But in none of them could he be quiet. But the street ran on in its moods and phases, always empty: he might have seen himself as in numberless avatars, in silence, doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred.

Though children can accept adults as adults, adults can never accept children as anything but adults too.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

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.

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.

It is the man who all his life has been self-convicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

It was only as he put his hand on the door that he became aware of complete silence beyond it, a silence which he at eighteen knew that it would take more than one person to make.

Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?

Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

Making or getting money is a kind of game where there are not any rules at all.

My, my. A body does get around.

Now she hates me. I have taught her that, at least.

She has no mother because fatherblood hates with love and pride, but motherblood with hate loves and cohabits.