Absalom, Absalom! Time Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #7

[…] not two of them there and then either but four of them riding the two horses through the iron darkness and that not mattering either […]. (8.2)

As Shreve and Quentin sit in their dorm room hashing out the details of Sutpen's story, the two friends begin to blend with the figures of Charles Bon and Henry. Shreve and Quentin are so fascinated that, in a sense, they become the other two men. We dare you to write about this book and not call Quentin "Henry" once in a while.

Quote #8

They [Bon and Henry] stared at one another – glared rather […] a sort of hushed and naked searching, each look burdened with youth's immemorial obsession not with time's dragging weight which the old live with but with its fluidity […]. (8.4)

Bon and Henry display a very odd attraction to one another. Each young man is trying to figure the other one out but doing so without any adult sense of urgency.

Quote #9

They [Shreve and Quentin] did not retreat from the cold. They both bore it as though in deliberate flagellant exaltation of physical misery transmogrified into the spirit's travail of the two young men during that time fifty years ago, or forty-eight rather, then forty-seven and then forty-six […]. (8.22)

Once again, Shreve and Quentin blend into Charles Bon and Henry. Their obsession with the story sustains them in spite of the profound chill in their room. They are transported into the past through their act of mutual storytelling.