Quotes from The Sound and the Fury

“...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...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 of 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.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“It's not when you realise that nothing can help you - religion, pride, anything - it's when you realise that you don't need any aid.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“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...”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly 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.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“She loved him not only in spite of but because he himself was incapable of love.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“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.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“I am not one of those women who can stand things.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“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.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue...”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“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.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“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.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“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.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“Even sound seemed to fail in this air, like the air was worn out with carrying sounds so long.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“Did you ever have a sister? did you?”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“In the South you are ashamed of being a virgin. Boys. Men. They lie about it. Because it means less to women, Father said. He said it was men invented virginity not women. Father said it's like death: only a state in which the others are left and I said, But to believe it doesn't matter and he said, That's what's so sad about anything: not only virginity and I said, Why couldn't it have been me and not her who is unvirgin and he said, That's why that's sad too; nothing is even worth the changing of it...”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“and i temporary and he was the saddest word of all there is nothing else in the world its not despair until time its not even time until it was”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

“When I was little there was a picture in one of our books, a dark place into which a single weak ray of light came slanting upon two faces lifted out of the shadow.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury

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Popular quotes

“The orchestra strikes up with ‘Stockholm in My Heart’, and everyone joins in. Hands sway in the air, mobile phone cameras are raised. A wonderful feeling of togetherness. It will be another fifteen minutes until, with meticulous premeditation, the whole thing is torn to shreds. Let us sing along for the time being. We have a long way to go before we return here. Only when the journey has softened us up, when we are ready to think the unthinkable, will we be permitted to come back.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Little Star

“She returned her sword to its sheath. "It was a good idea, son of Thor. You have wounded it."
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"No, I mean did I seriously wound it."
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― K.L. Armstrong, quote from Thor's Serpents

“Oh well, memories, said I. Yes, even remembering in itself is sad, yet how much more its object! Don't let yourself in for things like that, it's not for you and not for me. It only weakens one's present position without strengthening the former one - nothing is more obvious - quite apart from the fact that the former one doesn't need strengthening.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“as he had? An abby streaked into the clearing. Then another. And another. A fourth. Fifth. No more. Please. No—A group of five joined the others. Then ten more. Soon there were twenty-five of them milling around the boulders in the shadow of that cliff. His heart fell. He crawled back”
― Blake Crouch, quote from Wayward

“The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.”
― Sam Kean, quote from The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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