Quentin Compson

I dont suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to the sound of a watch or a clock. You dont have to. You can oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear-

perhaps its easier to understand time than any of us ever thought possible time is just a creation of mandkind a sound caught in the fury of our lives it moves in slow undulations in shadows and the only place it ever vanishes is the cleansing flame that you spoke of when you pleaded incest to save what you loved most

Innocence.

when i hold him i understand what quentin tried to save when i look into the sky in his eyes and see the clouds of possibility and imagination i love him more than anything my brother and i worry that someday he will become man he will believe that purity is nothing but a word although now he is my purity

I am imperfect.

the little girl in my chapter is not italian but she has brown eyes like the eyes of a toy bear and they watch me with the friendliness and love that quentin understood but she is a shadow a

memory and someday she will grow up and be a woman just like i am a woman not a girl not a child but something already destroyed and blooming against the decay still capable of love but maybe not of being loved scared of being loved but wanting it like caddy not even understanding the word and choking it like choking on a blistered shadow that creeps into the throat and catches there but somehow im not scared not of time not of men not of the wounds that come with seeing the butterflies float through spring like the flecks that chipped away from the sun

Nobody knows a person until they learn to know their soul

mine struggles to get out to be known but there is a sister miles away from me a brother who loved me once as a brother should never love a sister and the thought disgusts me like it disgusts quentin but sometimes you believe in the corrupt to prove that there is a speck of innocence in this world that there is a feeling of love someplace but there is a girl who is waiting for her husband to come home from a war AND THERE IS A SISTER waiting for the boy she loves but can not marry because her soul hides she is the sister i felt happiest with because i could forget the words that signified nothing and be a fool and share the joy that overwhelmes shadows and death and love and time

If I could meet Quentin Compson I think I would meet somebody who believed in the innocence I only thought myself to love. Together we could purify, or at least understand each other without comparing speech on sparknotes.

But it trully is a wonderful world.