Quotes

These are random quotes I particularly like. They're in no particular order; there's no particular time frame as to when I discovered them, and I like them for many different reasons! I'm not even endorsing the people who said them, but something about each one speaks to me in some inexplicable way.

*"We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the salt water off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings."  Erma Bombeck (The world lost her fresh witticisms years ago, but the old ones live on; and we still so relate to them! She was just so Right, and she had such a way of saying so.  )

*"No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one." Elbert Hubbard
(pretty sure he wrote that after returning home and looked at the 'car' to unpack and the laundry to wash!!)

*"The  quarter dropped into the hype machine will expire, and the machine will go still and cold. But the story will remain. " Lauren DeStefano, author of Wither and Fever
I love that; Courtney quoted it recently, with GREAT reason. It's Soul Truth.

*I'm not an admirer of Thomas Monson or his religion, but I like this quote because it speaks to the emotions that the best authors may feel, the pain and agony of birth pangs required for great literature to spring forth, as well as the joy of creation that is the final result: 
"God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation."

*Delia Ephron, a favorite YA writer of mine, lost her sister, Norah Ephron, last week to a long and fairly secretive battle with cancer. Norah's talent with words was lauded from Bookland to Hollywood for her dialogue and her insight into the comedic relationship between man and woman ("You've Got Mail" - "When Harry Met Sally" etc). I know her movies (and like them) but I never read Norah's words in book form and I suspect her worldview is very, very opposite to mine. But I like this general concept she expressed about reading:
"Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person."

*I have read every Louis L'Amour book written. They are full of adventure, history and wonderfully wise characters. I could publish his quotes forever, but here are a few I particularly like from a great writer (I hate it when an author dies and his fresh voice is silenced, but his past voice is forever!) and a wise man.
On books and writing :
"It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time."

"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on."

"Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."

"Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening in town? Attending a ballgame? Or learning something that can be with you your life long."

"One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time- asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how this story turns out!"
On LIFE from some of his books:

"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life inot the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds." (The Walking Drum)

"The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail." (The Proving Trail)

"He never knew when he was whipped ... So he never was ..." (To the Far Blue Mountains)

*My MOTHER quoted this Gelett Burgess nonsense poem many times in my childhood. He was a U.S. poet (1866-1951) who was also the author of the Goops books. It is said that he invented the blurb. Who knew!
"I never saw a purple cow. I never hope to see one. But I can tell you anyhow. I'd rather see than be one."
For most of my life, I figured the verse was anonymous. In searching to see if there was an author, I also found that he wrote this one: "Ah, yes, I wrote the 'Purple Cow' - I'm sorry, now, I wrote it! But I can tell you, anyhow, I'll kill you if you quote it!'  #writer'sremorse

*Jack Kerouac - the most famous of the Beat poets. I'm not an admirer of his lifestyle, but ... he had an awesome way of expressing himself.
On Writing=
"Write in recollection and amazement for yourself."

"Anybody can write, but not anybody can invent new forms of writing."

"...it ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it."

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
An observation on life and a great example of Kerouac's descriptive style = "A sociable smile is nothing more than a mouth full of teeth."

*Lucy V. Morgan - "Because the world only lets me be one person, but a book lets me be a thousand."

*Theodore Seuss Geisel - "The more that you read, the more things you will know; the more you learn, the more places you'll go."

*Harlan Coben - "No one has to fail so I can succeed."

*C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed - "No one told me that grief felt so like fear."

*William Faulkner - The Wild Palms - "Given the choice between the experiences of pain and nothing, I would choose pain."

*William Shakespear - "Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o're wrought heart and bids it break."

* “ ‘Wordsmithing’ is creative hard labor, so you need a driving force to keep going. The magic happens when it becomes your vocation.” Jonathan Gunson

* Only God
Only GOD can turn
a MESS into a MESSage,
a TEST into a TESTimony,
a TRIal into a TRIumph,
a VICTim into a VICTory.
GOD is GOOD ... all the time!
~ Unknown

*

• Will Smith's philosophy :He says,

 “The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. *TALENT you have naturally. SKILL is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.*

I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening WORK ETHIC. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working. While the other guys’ eating, I’m working.

There’s no easy way around it. No matter how talented you are, your talent is going to fail you if you’re not skilled. If you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day, you’ll never be able to communicate with people - with your artistry - the way that you want….

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* Thomas Mann ~ ”A writer is someone to whom writing is more difficult than it is to other people.”

* Deb Caletti, Stay “What is uneasy when you are awake in the daylight is terror in the dark honesty of your dreams.”

“One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind, and when not to.”

“The most true-love words are not the ones that grasp and hold and bind you, twisting you both up together in some black dance. No, they are ones that leave you free to stand alone on your own solid ground, leave him to do the same, a tender space between you.”

“Just because it turned out bad, doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant.”

“You can have ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.”

“It's strange, isn't it, how the idea of belonging to someone can sound so great? It can be comforting, the way it makes things decided. We like the thought of being held, until it's too tight. We like that certainty, until it means there's no way out. And we like being his, until we realize we're not ours anymore.”

* Deb Caletti, The Six Rules of Maybe

“I'd always thought telling the truth to other people was hard, but maybe that was a snap compared to telling the truth to yourself. Sometimes we just refused to know what we knew.”

“You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.”

“A person who says "it's your decision" is informing you that your decision sucks.”

“Being needed was a handy trick. It could fill you up so full you never even noticed all the places that were empty.”

* Deb Caletti ~ The Secret Life of Prince Charming –

“They ought to make people apply for a permit before they can say they love you.”

“Those questions you have? Whether he's the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay? When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not.”

“Let me tell you, you either have chemistry or you don't, and you better have it, or it's like kissing some relative. But chemistry, listen to me, you got to be careful. Chemistry is like those perfume ads, the ones that look so interesting and mysterious but you dont even know at first what they're even selling. Or those menues without the prices. Mystery and intrigue are gonna cost you. Great looking might mean something ve-ry expensive, and I don't mean money. What I'm saying is, chemistry is a place to start, not an end point.”

“Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own.”

“This is what I know. Don't settle for 40, 50, or even 80 percent. A relationship-it shouldn't be too small or too tight or even a little scratchy. It shouldn't take up space in your closet out of guilty conscience or convenience or a moment of desire. Do you hear me? It should be perfect for you. It should be lasting. Wait. wait for 100 percent.”

*  Deb Caletti ~ The Story of Us –

The story, our real story is this: doomed, precious, imperfect love. Love, deep and endless and brave in the face of certain loss--through death and leavings and growing up and letting go. Love, given over. It's the tender pulse of every word and every line and every chapter. It's our story, and it's the place where our heart, no matter what, always finds home.

Stories are what you have when the place is gone and the dried-up roses have crumbled and the ring is lost and that old car is finally junked. Stories are where the meaning ends up.

*Deb Caletti ~ Honey, Baby, Sweetheart - “Here is something that Peach, one of the Casserole Queens, says about men and women and love. You know that scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is standing on the ground looking longingly at Juliet on the balcony above him? One of the most romantic moments in all of literary history? Peach says there's no way that Romeo was standing down there to profess his undying devotion. The truth, Peach says, is that Romeo was just trying to look up Juliet's skirt.”

“A person is never as quiet or unrestrained as they seem, or as bad or good, as vulnerable or as strong, as sweet or as feisty; we are thickly layered, page lying upon page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. It can rip us apart or hold us together...Layers, by their nature, are fragile things.”

“To an untrained eye, need and love were as easily mistaken for each other as the real master's painting and a forgery.”

“We are thickly layered, page lying upon page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding.”

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*"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Michael Jordan

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"Following your heart means allowing yourself the possibility of finding true love to be stronger than the fear of rejection."   Susane Colasanti  "All I Need"

"When faced with senseless drama, spiteful criticisms and misguided opinions, walking away is the best way to stand up for yourself. To respond with anger is an endorsement of their attitude."   Dodinsky

There are COUNTLESS C.S. Lewis quotes that I could add here:

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."  C.S. Lewis