The Sound and the Fury Quotes

“You’re not the one who has to bear it . . . It’s not your responsibility. You can go away. You dont have to bear the brunt of it day in and day out. You owe nothing to them, to Mr. Compson’s memory. I know you have never had any tenderness for Jason. You’ve never tried to conceal it.”

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

“It’s not when you realise that nothing can help you--religion, pride, anything--it’s when you realise that you dont need any aid.”

“They aint no luck going be on no place where one of they own chillen’s name aint never spoke.”

“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 feminise it but added to its anonymity.”

“So that was it. And you were trying to tell Caddy and you couldn’t tell her. You wanted to, but you couldn’t, could you. Of course Caddy wont. Of course Caddy wont. Just wait till I dress.”

“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.”

“I know I’m just a trouble and a burden to you.”

“Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books; nowadays he is known by the ones he has not returned.”

“I’m a lady. You might not believe that from my offspring, but I am.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If I’d just had a mother so I could say Mother Mother.”

“His skin was dead looking and hairless; dropsical too, he moved with a shambling gait like a trained bear. His hair was pale and fine. It had been brushed smoothly down upon his brow like that of children in daguerrotypes. His eyes were clear, of the pale sweet blue of cornflowers, his thick mouth hung open, drooling a little.”

“I couldn’t feel the gate at all, but I could smell the bright cold.”

“So that was it. And you were trying to tell Caddy and you couldn’t tell her. You wanted to, but you couldn’t, could you. Of course Caddy wont. Of course Caddy wont. Just wait till I dress.”

“He needs to be sent to Jackson . . . How can anybody live in a house like this.”

“Father and I protect women from one another from themselves our women.”

“There was a clock, high up in the sun, and I thought about how, when you dont want to do a thing, your body will try to trick you into doing it, sort of unawares.”

“Huh, Dilsey said. Name aint going to help him. Hurt him, neither. Folks don’t have no luck, changing names. My name been Dilsey since fore I could remember and it be Dilsey when they’s long forgot me.”