I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote humorously reflects on the effects of alcohol, suggesting that it can artificially enhance one's confidence and perception of self.
William Faulkner's quote humorously illustrates the experience many have with alcohol, where the first drink can instill a sense of confidence and empowerment. As one drinks more, this effect can amplify, leading to a state of exaggerated self-belief, yet as the number of drinks increases, it often results in a loss of control and clarity. This lighthearted observation captures the paradox of seeking confidence through substances, blending humor with a cautionary insight into indulgence.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used during a toast at a gathering to lighten the mood.
More from William Faulkner
All quotes βWhen 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...
Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
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.
Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.
Similar quotes
A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.
Now, some people do this for shock value. Shock is just another uptown word for surprise. Granted it has a different quality to it, but a joke is about surprising someone. I'm a great believer in context. You can joke about anything. I do like finding out where the line is drawn, deliberately crossing it and bringing some of them with me across the line, and having them be happy that I did.
This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.
Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about.
[...] things most people do naturally are often inexplicably difficult for me.