The Sound and the Fury quotes

“Did you come to meet Caddy.” she said, rubbing my hands. “What is it. What are you trying to tell Caddy.”

Caddy smelled like trees and like when she says we were asleep.

What are you moaning about, Luster said. You can watch them again when we get to the branch. Here. Here’s you a jimson weed. He gave me the flower. We went through the fence, into the lot.

“Hush now.” she said. “I’m not going to run away.” So I hushed.

Caddy smelled like trees in the rain.

What is the matter with you, Luster said. Cant you get done with that moaning and play in the branch like folks.

I wasn’t crying, but I couldn’t stop.

I wasn’t crying, but the ground wasn’t still, and then I was crying.

The ground kept sloping up and the cows ran up the hill. T. P. tried to get up. He fell down again and the cows ran down the hill. Quentin held my arm and we went toward the barn.

“Going to be more than one more.” Dilsey said. “

Show me the man what aint going to die, bless Jesus.

”

“Of course I dont.” Father said, “

I admire Maury. He is invaluable to my own sense of racial superiority.

I wouldn’t swap Maury for a matched team. And do you know why, Quentin.”

“Of course.” Father said. “

Bad health is the primary reason for all life. Created by disease, within putrefaction, into decay.

Versh.”

Well, he cannot do it, Mother said. It’s raining. You will just have to play with him and keep him quiet. You, Benjamin.

Aint nothing going to quiet him, T. P. said. He think if he down to the gate, Miss Caddy come back.

I could hear them talking. I went out the door and I couldn’t hear them, and I went down to the gate, where the girls passed with their booksatchels. They looked at me, walking fast, with their heads turned.

Huh, Dilsey said. Name aint going to help him. Hurt him, neither. Folks dont have no luck, changing names.

My name been Dilsey since fore I could remember and it be Dilsey when they’s long forgot me.

How will they know it’s Dilsey, when it’s long forgot, Dilsey, Caddy said.

She smelled like trees. In the corner it was dark, but I could see the window. I squatted there, holding the slipper.

I couldn’t see it, but my hands saw it, and I could hear it getting night, and my hands saw the slipper but I couldn’t see myself, but my hands could see the slipper, and I squatted there, hearing it getting dark.

Here you is, Luster said. Look what I got. He showed it to me. You know where I got it. Miss Quentin gave it to me. I knowed they couldn’t keep me out. What you doing, off in here.

it’s rather excrutiatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s.

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.

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.

It was propped against the collar box and I lay listening to it. Hearing it, that is. I dont suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You dont have to.

… shadow of the sash was still there and I had learned to tell almost to the minute, so I’d have to turn my back to it, feeling the eyes animals used to have in the back of their heads when it was on top, itching.

It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret.

Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.

It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that.

That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels.

That had no sister.

I turned back up the street, to the window. He was working at the table behind the window. He was going bald. There was a glass in his eye—a metal tube screwed into his face. I went in.

The place was full of ticking, like crickets in September grass, and I could hear a big clock on the wall above his head.

He looked up, his eye big and blurred and rushing beyond the glass. I took mine out and handed it to him.

I went out, shutting the door upon the ticking. I looked back into the window. He was watching me across the barrier.

There were about a dozen watches in the window, a dozen different hours and each with the same assertive and contradictory assurance that mine had, without any hands at all.

Contradicting one another. I could hear mine, ticking away inside my pocket, even though nobody could see it, even though it could tell nothing if anyone could.

And so I told myself to take that one.

Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

The hands were extended, slightly off the horizontal at a faint angle, like a gull tilting into the wind. Holding all I used to be sorry about like the new moon holding water, niggers say.

Holding all I used to be sorry about like the new moon holding water, niggers say. The jeweler was working again, bent over his bench, the tube tunnelled into his face. His hair was parted in the center.

The part ran up into the bald spot, like a drained marsh in December.

I saw the hardware store from across the street. I didn’t know you bought flatirons by the pound.

His mother came down in a hired auto, in a fur suit like an arctic explorer’s, and saw him off in a twenty-five mile wind and a steady drove of ice floes like dirty sheep.

Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; He is a Kentuckian too.

When he sailed away she made a detour and came down to the river again and drove along parallel with him, the car in low gear.

I’m sure she solaced herself by being convinced that some misfit Maingault or Mortemar had got mixed up with the lodge-keeper’s daughter. Which was quite probable, whether she invented it or not.

Spoade was the world’s champion sitter-around, no holds barred and gouging discretionary.

The shell was a speck now, the oars catching the sun in spaced glints, as if the hull were winking itself along. Did you ever have a sister? No but they’re all bitches. Did you ever have a sister? One minute she was. Bitches.

Hats not unbleached and not hats. In three years I can not wear a hat. I could not. Was. Will there be hats then since I was not and not Harvard then.

Where the best of thought Father said clings like dead ivy vines upon old dead brick.

Not Harvard then. Not to me, anyway. Again. Sadder than was. Again. Saddest of all. Again.

The chimes began again, the half hour. I stood in the belly of my shadow and listened to the strokes spaced and tranquil along the sunlight, among the thin, still little leaves.

Spaced and peaceful and serene, with that quality of autumn always in bells even in the month of brides.

Lying on the ground under the window bellowing He took one look at her and knew. Out of the mouths of babes. The street lamps The chimes ceased. I went back to the postoffice, treading my shadow into pavement.

I wonder if even miners in the bowels of the earth. That’s why whistles: because people that sweat, and if just far enough from sweat you wont hear whistles and in eight minutes you should be that far from sweat in Boston.

Father said a man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired, but then time is your misfortune Father said.

A gull on an invisible wire attached through space dragged. You carry the symbol of your frustration into eternity. Then the wings are bigger Father said only who can play a harp.

Wait I’ll get used to it in a minute wait just a minute I’ll get

Even sound seemed to fail in this air, like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long.

A dog’s voice carries further than a train, in the darkness anyway. And some people’s. Niggers. Louis Hatcher never even used his horn carrying it and that old lantern. I said, “Louis, when was the last time you cleaned that lantern?”

But that’s not it. It’s not not having them. It’s never to have had them then I could say O That That’s Chinese I dont know Chinese. And Father said it’s because you are a virgin: dont you see?

Women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature.

It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just words and he said So is virginity and I said you dont know. You cant know and he said Yes. On the instant when we come to realise that tragedy is secondhand.

“I’d take what I could get, then. I can catch just as many fish with this pole as I could with a twenty-five dollar one.” Then they talked about what they would do with twenty-five dollars.

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.

“I’d buy a horse and wagon,” the second said.

Else have I thought about I cant even cry I died last year I told you I had but I didnt know then what I meant I didnt know what I was saying

Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar.

Man the sum of his climatic experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire. But now I know I’m dead I tell you

… told you I had but I didnt know then what I meant I didnt know what I was saying Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar.

Man the sum of his climatic experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you.

A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire. But now I know I’m dead I tell you

“It’s a mistake, Squire,” Spoade said. “

Children and dogs are always taking up with him like that. He cant help it.

”

“All right.

I’m sorry I didn’t bleed on him a little, at least.

”

“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.

”

Then the car went on, the draught building steadily up in the open door until it was drawing steadily through the car with the odour of summer and darkness except honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle was the saddest odour of all, I think.

I remember lots of them. Wistaria was one. On the rainy days when Mother wasnt feeling quite bad enough to stay away from the windows we used to play under it.

… have sold Benjy’s pasture and I can be dead in Harvard Caddy said in the caverns and the grottoes of the sea tumbling peacefully to the wavering tides because Harvard is such a fine sound forty acres is no high price for a fine sound.

A find dead sound we will swap Benjy’s pasture for a fine dead sound.

It will last him a long time because he cannot hear it unless he can smell it as soon as she came in the door he began to cry I thought all the time it was just one of those town squirts that Father was …

Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.

I says you’re lucky if her playing out of school is all that worries you.

“Sure,” I says, “

I never had time to be. I never had time to go to Harvard like Quentin or drink myself into the ground like Father.

I had to work. But of course if you want me to follow her around and see what she does, I can quit the store and get a job where I can work at night.

“I dont care,” she says, “

I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I dont care. I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.

”

About four or five years ago he was taken sick. Scared the hell out of him so that when he was up again he joined the church and bought himself a Chinese missionary, five thousand dollars a year.

I often think how mad he’ll be if he was to die and find out there’s not any heaven, when he thinks about that five thousand a year.

Like I say, he’d better go on and die now and save money.

Well, Jason likes work.

I says no I never had university advantages because at Harvard they teach you how to go for a swim at night without knowing how to swim and at Sewanee they dont even teach you what water is.

I says you might send me to the state University; maybe I’ll learn how to stop my clock with a nose spray and then you can send Ben to the Navy I says or to the cavalry anyway, they use geldings in the cavalry.

“Fiddlesticks,” Father says, “What do doctors know?

They make their livings advising people to do whatever they are not doing at the time, which is the extent of anyone’s knowledge of the degenerate ape.

You’ll have a minister in to hold my hand next.” Then Mother cried, and he went out. Went downstairs, and then I heard the sideboard. I woke up and heard him going down again.

“You’s a cold man, Jason, if man you is,” she says. “

I thank de Lawd I got mo heart dan dat, even ef hit is black.

”

“Well,” he says, “I dont spute dat neither.

Ef dat uz a crime, all chain-gangs wouldn’t be black.

”

I knew all the time what it would be, I reckon. That was the only thing else that could happen, especially holding it up until I had already had the check entered on the pass book.

I dont see how a city no bigger than New York can hold enough people to take the money away from us country suckers.

Work like hell all day every day, send them your money and get a little piece of paper back, Your account closed at 20.62. Teasing you along, letting you pile up a little paper profit, then bang! Your account closed at 20.62.

I went back to the store. It was half past three almost.

Damn little time to do anything in, but then I am used to that. I never had to go to Harvard to learn that.

The band had quit playing. Got them all inside now, and they wouldn’t have to waste any more wind. Earl says,

If they ever farmed it.

It’s a good thing the Lord did something for this country; the folks that live on it never have.

Friday afternoon, and from right here I could see three miles of land that hadn’t even been broken, and every able bodied man in the county in town at that show.

“There they come,” he says. “I reckon I better get up front.” He went on.

It’s a curious thing how no matter what’s wrong with you, a man’ll tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman’ll tell you to get married.

It always takes a man that never made much at anything to tell you how to run your business, though.

“I wanted you and she to get along with one another,” she says. “But she has inherited all of the headstrong traits. Quentin’s too. I thought at the time, with the heritage she would already have, to give her that name, too.

Sometimes I think she is the judgment of Caddy and Quentin upon me.

”

“I hope not,” I says. “

A good woman misses a lot she’s better off without knowing.

”

The earth immediately about the door was bare.

It had a patina, as though from the soles of bare feet in generations, like old silver or the walls of Mexican houses which have been plastered by hand.

Beside the house, shading it in summer, stood three mulberry trees, the fledged leaves that would later be broad and placid as the palms of hands streaming flatly undulant upon the driving air.

“Reckin so,” Luster said. “

Dese is funny folks. Glad I aint none of em.

”

“For what?” Jason said.

“You never resurrected Christ, did you?”

They heard Dilsey mount the final stair, then her slow feet overhead.

The door opened, swung inward. He stood in it for a moment, hiding the room, then he stepped aside. “Go in,” he said in a thick, light voice. They went in.

It was not a girl’s room. It was not anybody’s room, and the faint scent of cheap cosmetics and the few feminine objects and the other evidences of crude and hopeless efforts to feminize it but added to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped transience of rooms in assignation houses.

The bed had not been disturbed. On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a little too pink; from a half open bureau drawer dangled a single stocking. The window was open. A pear tree grew there, close against the house.

“You know whut I bet?” Luster said. “I bet he beat her. I bet he knock her in de head en now he gone fer de doctor. Dat’s whut I bet.”

The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself

; after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times. Ben looked up at it, then he looked at the bullet-like silhouette of Luster’s head in the window and he begun to bob his head again, drooling. He whimpered.

Luster came and shook him. “You hush dis minute!” he shouted. “Here,” he said. He hauled Ben out of the chair and dragged the chair around facing the stove and opened the door to the firebox and shoved Ben into the chair.

They looked like a tug nudging at a clumsy tanker in a narrow dock.

Ben sat down again facing the rosy door. He hushed. Then they heard the clock again, and Dilsey slow on the stairs. When she entered he began to whimper again. Then he lifted his voice.

He put the saw away and brought the mallet to her. 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.

“Listen at him,” Luster said, “He been gwine on dat way ev’y since you sont us outen de house. I dont know whut got in to him dis mawnin.”

The sky was broken now into scudding patches that dragged their swift shadows up out of the shabby garden, over the broken fence and across the yard. Dilsey stroked Ben’s head, slowly and steadily, smoothing the bang upon his brow.

He wailed quietly, unhurriedly.

“Hush,” Dilsey said, “Hush, now. We be gone in a minute. Hush, now.” He wailed quietly and steadily.

Luster returned, wearing a stiff new straw hat with a coloured band and carrying a cloth cap.

The hat seemed to isolate Luster’s skull, in the beholder’s eye as a spotlight would, in all its individual planes and angles.

So peculiarly individual was its shape that at first glance the hat appeared to be on the head of someone standing immediately behind Luster. Dilsey looked at the hat.

“Git wet, I reckon,” Frony said.

“I aint never stopped no rain yit.”

“Mammy always talkin bout hit gwine rain,” Luster said.

“Den you send um to me,” Dilsey said.

“Tell um de good Lawd dont keer whether he smart er not. Dont nobody but white trash keer dat.”

A street turned oil at right angles, descending, and became a dirt road. On either hand the land dropped more sharply; a broad flat dotted with small cabins whose weathered roofs were on a level with the crown of the road.

“En dey brung dat all de way fum Saint Looey,” Frony whispered.

“I’ve knowed de Lawd to use cuiser tools dan dat,”

Dilsey said. “Hush, now,” she said to Ben, “Dey fixin to sing again in a minute.”

He tramped steadily back and forth beneath the twisted paper and the Christmas bell, hunched, his hands clasped behind him.

He was like a worn small rock whelmed by the successive waves of his voice.

With his body he seemed to feed the voice that, succubus like, had fleshed its teeth in him.

“Whyn’t you quit dat, mammy?” Frony said. “Wid all dese people lookin. We be passin white folks soon.”

“I’ve seed de first en de last,” Dilsey said. “Never you mind me.”

“First en last whut?” Frony said.

“Never you mind,” Dilsey said.

“I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin.”

Before they reached the street, though, she stopped and lifted her skirt and dried her eyes on the hem of her topmost underskirt. Then they went on.

Mrs. Compson said nothing.

Like so many cold, weak people, when faced at last by the incontrovertible disaster she exhumed from somewhere a sort of fortitude, strength.

In her case it was an unshakable conviction regarding the yet unplumbed event. “Well,” she said presently, “Did you find it?”

“Gwine on a trip, is you?” the negro asked him. He didn’t answer. “Look like hit gwine fair off, after all,” the negro said.

“Fair off, hell,” Jason said, “It’ll be raining like hell by twelve oclock.”

He looked at the sky, thinking about rain, about the slick clay roads, himself stalled somewhere miles from town.

“Thinks he can sit with his hands folded and see me lose my job. I’ll show him about jobs.” Of his niece he did not think at all, nor of the arbitrary valuation of the money.

Neither of them had had entity or individuality for him for ten years; together they merely symbolized the job in the bank of which he had been deprived before he ever got it.

The air brightened, the running shadow patches were not the obverse, and it seemed to him that the fact that the day was clearing was another cunning stroke on the part of the foe, the fresh battle toward which he was carrying ancient wounds.