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
Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the emotional weight of memories and the pain of loss experienced in isolation.
William Faulkner's quote speaks to the human experience of sorrow and memory, suggesting that the act of remembering can evoke feelings of loneliness and turmoil. It implies that memories, particularly those associated with grief, can shape our perception of the world around us, presenting a stark contrast between what is lost and the harsh realities of life, represented metaphorically by the 'savage and lonely streets'.
Themes
MemoryGriefLonelinessSorrowExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a eulogy, one might say, 'As Faulkner states, knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets, reminding us of the emotional weight of our lost loved ones.'
More from William Faulkner
All quotes βI feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
William FaulknerRead
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...
William FaulknerRead
Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
William FaulknerRead
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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