“I thought you looked like a man with a bridge on fire, she said.” — William Gay Fire Copy Share Image
“Songs about death and lost love and rambling down the line because sometimes down the line was the only place left.” — William Gay Death Copy Share Image
“He seemed to be drawing inward toward some point at which he would be reduced to the fundamental essence of himself.” — William Gay Essence Copy Share Image
“He wanted her the rest of his life, and failing that, he wanted permission to walk along beside her while she lived… — William Gay Heart Copy Share Image
“Folks called this place haunted, felt the emanations of an unspeakable act moving outward like ripples on water.” — William Gay Copy Share Image
“You don't learn that, she said. It's just there. It sounds like he spent his whole life trying to unlearn it. Trying… — William Gay Life Copy Share Image
“The old man always used too much of everything, too many lemons, too much sugar, as if halfmeasures at anything were beneath… — William Gay Old man Copy Share Image
“Seems like it's peaceful, just bein' in a country that lays the way you remember it layin” — William Gay Patriotism Copy Share Image
“She was a page torn from a calendar, a year folded neatly and laid aside in some place you never look.” — William Gay Copy Share Image
“Hardin lived in a world he manipulated day to day, you never knew when a piece of information might have a use.… — William Gay Copy Share Image
“Fleming doubted all this but he listened anyway and thought with a kind of sardonic amusement that before the night was over… — William Gay Copy Share Image
“Truth had hanged the way the landscape had changed to accommodate progress, altered by each generation to its purpose. He had learned… — William Gay Old men Copy Share Image
“Even when he'd arrived he'd had restless eyes, eyes that were always looking about as if he might notice some place he'd… — William Gay Copy Share Image
“When the plane exploded fire went streaking down the wall of night like trails of phosphorous from a firework of unreckonable magnitude… — William Gay Beauty Copy Share Image
“He stayed out of the house, he was much of the time in the woods, he felt like some animal half domesticated… — William Gay Copy Share Image
“don't start talkin about books or quotin poems at them. these is good folks but they ain't real crazy about readin books.… — William Gay Book Copy Share Image
“a moving river of light that flowed above the dark water like its negative image and attained a transient and fragile dominion… — William Gay Books Copy Share Image
“He lay on the bed and he felt he might never rise from it. He lay in an enormous torpor. The world… — William Gay Mind Copy Share Image
“Beyond the mothriddled light their faces were rapt and transfixed, he sang about death as if it was the only kept promise… — William Gay Death Copy Share Image
“The day drew on, was swallowed in dusk. No bird called, no insect. Life in abeyance, the world itself grinding to a… — William Gay Dusk Copy Share Image
“Julia Bradshaw was part Cherokee Indian. She was small and dark and the inscrutability of her eyes hinted at enigmas a man… — William Gay Cherokee indian Copy Share Image
“He heard footsteps on the ice and just as someone pounded on the door death came swiftly into the trailer like a… — William Gay Death Copy Share Image
“Outside in the barnlot he looked up and the pale moon was directly over him and all-encompassing. It appeared to be lowering… — William Gay Moon Copy Share Image
“There was something oddly restful about the fireflies. He couldn't put his finger on it but he drew comfort from it anyway.… — William Gay Dark Copy Share Image
“Listen, he said vehemently. Somebody's going to have to say what they really mean and then do what they say they will.… — William Gay Lying Copy Share Image
“In the molten fire where he lay he could watch the slow machinations of eternity, the cosmic miracle of each second being… — William Gay Eternity Copy Share Image
“While he slept the world spun on, changed, situations altered and grew more complex, left him more inadequate to deal with them.” — William Gay Mind Copy Share Image
“He figured somewhere in these territories there was an enormous madhouse whose keeper had thrown up his hands in disgusted defeat and… — William Gay Failure Copy Share Image
“No move is the wrong move, What? Sometimes any move at all is better than nothin. If you're right, you're one up.… — William Gay Copy Share Image
“Life blindsides you so hard you can taste the bright copper blood in your mouth then it beguiles you with a gift… — William Gay Beauty Copy Share Image
“As night deepened all he could see was the shifting line of fire, like some malfunction in the wiring of the world… — William Gay Fire Copy Share Image
“Together they knitted whole the fabric of night where violence had rent it. Everything was always changing and everything was always the… — William Gay Night Copy Share Image
“He was wishing the past was a place you could backtrack to, take a sideroad you'd walked hurriedly past, wake somebody from… — William Gay Bad dream Copy Share Image
“After a while a three-quarter moon eased up over the treeline and the dusty road went white as milk, Rorshach patches of… — William Gay Moon Copy Share Image
“The man wore a dark fedora and beneath its brim the fierce empty eyes looked out as if they were coming from… — William Gay Fedora Copy Share Image
