Quotes About Half-ghost

Asgina ageli is a term that the red savages employ—the Cherokee of the mountains; I heard it from one I had as guide one time. It means 'half-ghost,' one who should have died by right, but yet remains on the earth; a woman who survives a mortal illness, a man fallen into his enemies' hands who escapes. They say an asgina ageli has one foot on the earth and the other in the spirit world. He can talk to the spirits, and see the Nunnahee—the Little People.

Absalom, Absalom! uses the fractured mind of a boy who seems already half-ghost to present the family history of "the son who widowed the daughter who had not yet been a bride." No one can read it quickly or even entirely with pleasure, but anyone who can hear its flowered dissonance will know that such books are why we read at all.