"I asked of Echo 't other day (Whose words are few and often funny), What to a novice she could say Of courtship, love, and matrimony. Quoth Echo, plainly, — "Matter-o'-money.""

"I'm growing fonder of my staff; I'm growing dimmer in the eyes; I'm growing fainter in my laugh; I'm growing deeper in my sighs; I'm growing careless of my dress; I'm growing frugal of my gold; I'm growing wise; I'm growing — yes, — I'm growing old!"

"What Lowely meant she didn't know For she always avoided "everything low,""

"NAY, weep not, dearest, though the child be dead; He lives again in Heaven's unclouded life,"

""Once more, my gallant boys!" he cried: "Three times! — you know the fable, — (I'll make it thirty," muttered he, "But I will lay the cable!")"

"I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right! — it's not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, for early rising!""

"But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off, — Early Rising!"

""God bless the man who first invented sleep!" So Sancho Panza said, and so say I."

"INGLORIOUS friend! most confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!""

"Don't use strong drink, — pray let me advise, — It 's bad for the stomach, and ruins the eyes;"

"Young men! it 's a critical thing to go Exactly right with a lady in tow; But when you are in the proper track, Just go ahead, and never look back!"

"He takes the strangest liberties — But never takes his leave!"

"In vain I speak of urgent tasks; In vain I scowl and pout; A frown is no extinguisher — It does not put him out!"

"Again I hear the creaking step! — He's rapping at the door! — Too well I know the boding sound That ushers in a bore."

"And so these men of Hindustan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right And all were in the wrong. So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!"

"It was six men of Hindustan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind) That each by observation Might satisfy the mind."

"Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."

"Which I wish to remark,— And my language is plain,— That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar."

"We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor."

"With the smile that was childlike and bland."

"Ah Sin was his name."

"Virtue always meets reward, But quicker when it wears a sword;"

"Each lost day has its patron saint!"

"But, when the goddess' work is done, The woman's still remains."

"There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death,"

"Don't be too quick To break bad habits: better stick, Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic."

"And he says that the mountains are fairer For once being held in your thought;"

"And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right, This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight."

"Later, when we were forced to accept the fact that finding gold was really the primary object of a gold-mining company, we still remained there"

"Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard in all England."

"Well, no offense: Thar ain't no sense In gittin' riled."

"The greatness of a writer has nothing to do with subject matter itself, only with how much the subject matter touches the author. It is the density of style which counts. Through Hemingway's style you feel matter, iron, wood. I admire Hemingway but I prefer what I know of Faulkner. Light in August is a marvelous book."

"I see the world very much in a Faulkner kind of way. People keep reappearing for me; all those women I knew in their thirties with small children when that first book came out in '59-I still know them now. There's still a lot of them around. And so I don't see life in what used to be called an alienated way. I see people going away and coming back. And I think a lot of people live that way; I don't think I'm so alone in that."

"Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. It is good-and universal-because it is specifically about a particular world. That's what I wish to do."

"I am the child of a bilingual family that delights in tongue acrobatics of mixed syntax and vocabulary. We write as we speak, in run-on sentences (if Faulkner could do it and be called great, why can't we?)"

"Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You're thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes — and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he's had his first one."

"Apparently the entire population of Jefferson, Mississippi consists of rhetoricians who would blanch at the sight of a simple declarative sentence ... Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book except that it seems to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent."

"Faulkner falsified life for dramatic effect. It's sentimentality disguised by the corncob."

"What's the difference between regional being the Southwest and regional being the South if the story is brilliant enough to be universal? Does it matter that Faulkner's universe was little? When he finished Absalom, Absalom, it wasn't about Mississippi; it was about the cosmos. So if a book like that is written by a Puerto Rican or a Native American, why should it continue to be taught as ethnic literature?"

"It is difficult for a young person today to know what to do. You cannot take advertising seriously; you cannot be truly involved with selling, or respect yourself, if the product you make is meant to become obsolete in a year or two. There is very little real, important work to do. And where there is no work, something goes, because we discover through working what we cannot discover any other way. As Faulkner says, you cannot make love eight hours a day, or drink or walk eight hours a day. You have to do something with your life, you have to find out what it is."

"Faulkner in Dry September — or Light in August, or even in The Sound and the Fury — can really get at (as you put it, "to the bone") the truth of what the black-white relationship is in the South, and how what a dark force it is in the Southern personality. At the same time, Faulkner, as a man, as a citizen of Mississippi, is committed to what in Mississippi seems to be their past. It is one thing for Faulkner to deal with the Negro in his imagination, where he can control him; and quite another thing to deal with him in life, where he can't control him. In life, obviously the Negro, the uncontrollable Negro, simply is determined to overthrow everything in which Faulkner imagines himself to believe. It is one thing to demand justice in literature, and another thing to face the price that one has got to pay for it in life."

"A gentleman can live through anything."

"When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it, which is not innocence but appetite; his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it, which is not ignorance but size. But Boon didn't know this. He must seduce me. And he had so little time: only from the time the train left until dark."

"You write a story to tell about people, man in his constant struggle with his own heart, with the hearts of others, or with his environment. It's man in the ageless, eternal struggles which we inherit and we go through as though they'd never happened before, shown for a moment in a dramatic instant of the furious motion of being alive, that's all any story is. You catch this fluidity which is human life and you focus a light on it and you stop it long enough for people to be able to see it.""

"That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing — from reading."