You can be 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 tim… - William Faulkner

...when she became not then half of memory became not and if I become not then all of remembering will cease to be.—Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief. Harry Wilbourne, in (Ch. 9) "Wild Palms"; p. 324 (Faulkner's italics)

He just stood and looked at his dying mother, his heart too full for words.

...probably by that time he had learned that there were three things and no more: breathing, pleasure, darkness; and without money there could be no pleasure, and without pleasure it would not even be breathing but mere protoplasmic inhale and collapse of blind unorganism in a darkness where light never began.