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 do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Faulkner emphasizes the importance of confidence and clarity in the writing process before making any revisions.
In this quote, Faulkner highlights the careful consideration that writers must take before deciding to rewrite their work. He suggests that rewriting should only occur when one possesses the certainty that they can improve the expression of their ideas, suggesting that clarity and confidence should guide the writing and editing process.
Themes
WritingRewritingConfidenceExpressionArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a writers' workshop, to encourage participants to think critically about their revisions.
More from William Faulkner
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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...
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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.
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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...the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being.
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