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
People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
Interpretation
Challenges and frustrations are essential for personal growth and resilience.
In this quote, William Faulkner highlights the necessity of facing difficulties and frustrations in life to develop strength and character. He suggests that while complete comfort might be appealing, it leads to stagnation, and only by enduring struggles can one cultivate true fortitude and artistic spirit.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a motivational speech about resilience in creative fields.
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.
I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
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...
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.
What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing?
Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind.
Reality - the way that is, exactly as it is, in every moment - is always kind. It's our story about reality that blurs our vision, obscures what's true, and leads us to believe that there is injustice in the world. I sometimes say that you move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.
Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.
An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.
We’re all imperfect and we all have needs. The weak usually do not ask for help, so they stay weak. If we recognize that we are imperfect, we will ask for help and we will pray for the guidance necessary to bring positive results to whatever we are doing.
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