Quotes from book
As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying is a 1930 novel, in the genre of Southern Gothic, by American author William Faulkner. Faulkner said that he wrote the novel from midnight to 4:00 am over the course of six weeks and that he did not change a word of it. Faulkner wrote it while working at a power plant, published it in 1930, and described it as a "tour de force." Faulkner's fifth novel, it is consistently ranked among the best novels of 20th-century literature. The title derives from Book XI of Homer's Odyssey , wherein Agamemnon tells Odysseus: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades."

“It's like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

“How do our lives ravel out
into the no-wind, no-sound,
the weary gestures wearily recapitulant:
echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string:
in sunset we fall into furious attitudes,
dead gestures of dolls.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

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

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Variant: Memory believes before knowing remembers.

[Light in August]
Source: As I Lay Dying

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

“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.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“My mother is a fish.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

“The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“That’s what they mean by the womb of time: the agony and the despair of spreading bones, the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“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.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Variant: ... the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.
Source: As I Lay Dying

“It's because I'm alone.. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“Darl is our brother, our brother Darl. Our brother Darl in a cage in Jackson where, his grimed hands lying lightly in the quiet interstices, looking out he foams.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“I can remember how when I was young I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind — and that of the minds who suffer the bereavement. 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.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

“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.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

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