When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.
William FaulknerRead
I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them, you can't stand a fact up, you've got to prop it up, and when you move to one side a little and look at it from that angle, it's not thick enough to cast a shadow in that direction.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the subjective nature of reality and how facts can be interpreted differently based on perspective.
William Faulkner's quote reflects on the limitations of facts, suggesting that they are not absolute truths but rather require interpretation and context to gain meaning. This highlights the importance of perspective in understanding reality, implying that what one perceives as true may differ depending on one’s viewpoint, thereby questioning the reliability of objective information.
Themes
PerspectiveTruthInterpretationRealitySubjectivity
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about historical events where differing perspectives are presented.
More from William Faulkner
All quotes →I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
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When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...
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Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
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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 any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
William FaulknerRead
Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.
William FaulknerRead
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