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
Don Quixote — I read that every year, as some do the Bible.
Interpretation
Reading is a vital activity that can resonate deeply with individuals, much like religious texts.
In this quote, William Faulkner expresses the profound impact that literature, specifically 'Don Quixote,' has on him, comparing its significance to that of the Bible for many. This highlights the idea that literature can provide guidance, inspiration, and a moral compass, similar to sacred texts, prompting readers to find personal meaning and reflection within the pages.
In practice
During a book club meeting, to encourage discussion about the impact of classic literature.
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.
It's really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he's the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don't like it.
I have this belief that we are so vulnerable when we open ourselves up to literature. We're reminded of these real parts of ourselves.
He didn't want to please his readers. He wanted to stretch them until they twanged.
You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.
Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.
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