“Out of the darkness came Mr Carsington's deep voice, cool and calm. " Pray don't trouble yourselves, gentlemen. It is merely a villain come to cut our throats, rob our stores and ravish our women. No need for alarm. Mrs Pembroke has the matter in hand.”

“Women, after all, gentlemen,' said the enthusiastic Mr. Snodgrass, 'are the great props and comforts of our existance.”

“Women don't realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits. We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones.”

“Ah, Mr Compson said, Years ago we in the South made our women into ladies. Then the War came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts?”

“I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.”

“If we are a people who pray, darkness is apt to be a lot of what our prayers are about. If we are people who do not pray, it is apt to be darkness in one form or another that has stopped our mouths.”