You guys are so great sending me all the emails, but you really should consider putting them into the comments, so everyone can share. (They're a lot more insightful than the comments crap I read on most blogs.)

Bill, who will otherwise remain anonymous since I didn't ask permission just responded, in part, to my message about Faulkner, a ways back, that I am so delinquent in following up on. He writes:

My favorite quote from As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren says,

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn't matter."

You writers have a love/hate relationship with words.....

Hahaha. Never thought about that. Even when I read that passage. Loved the hell out of that passage as well, but never noticed the contradiction. Or at least the paradox.

Then I was about to accuse Bill of forcing the other Bill's demons onto me, when I realized I share that love/hate relationship exactly. Why do I think I responded so strongly to the scene?

Ahhhhhhh. The things we will never see in our own reflection. Thanks for pointing that one out. Now what the hell am I going to do with it?