I agree with the Oxford American panel that declared William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! to be the greatest work in the history of Southern literature. Aside from the brilliance of the story, some of Faulkner’s sentences are so unique and evocative that it can be said that the world of Southern literature would have a gaping hole had he never written. Some of my favorites:
- “She accepted that, not reconciled, accepted. As though there is a breathing point in outrage when you can accept it almost with gratitude since you can say to yourself, ‘Thank God, this is all. At least I now know all of it.”
- “Surely there is something even in the demoniac, which Satan flees, aghast at his own handiwork, and which God looks on in pity…”
- “If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.”
- “When you have hated somebody for forty-three years
