Quote Round-Up: January 2013

"Life itself is a quotation."  Jorge Luis Borges

For years and years I have "saved" quotes. In journals, Word documents, on napkins, whatever. I would jot down passages and sentences that struck my fancy. And there it would be. Sitting there. Not being read by anyone and honestly, just cluttering shit up.

Well, now I have a BLOG. Finally, somewhere to harness all of those passages, sentences, thoughts, jokes, statements, that I carry around. I have decided that on the last day of every month, I'll have a quotes round-up. Now instead of me saying to myself, "Wow, that was lovely/horrifying/interesting," everyone can say it!

You people are so lucky.

Happy Birthdays to:

Carl Sandburg, January 6

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

Zora Neale Hurston, January 7

Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it doesn't make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

Moliere, January 15

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, and then for money.

Lewis Carroll, January 27

We're all mad here.

Anton Chekhov, January 29

What a fine weather today! Can't choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.

The Bartender's Tale, Ivan Doig

People come and go in our lives; that's as old a story as there is. But some of them the heart cries out to keep forever, and that is a fresh saga every time. p.86

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce

It must be the same all over England. People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The inhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that. p. 89

He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that, too. The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human. p.158

The kindness of the woman with food came back to him, and that of Martina.They had offered him comfort and shelter, even when he was afraid of taking them, and in accepting he had learned something new. It was as much of a gift to receive as it was to give, requiring as it did both courage and humility. p.201

The Patrick Melrose Novels, Edward St. Aubyn
Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk

During lunch David felt that he had perhaps pushed his disdain for middle-class prudery a little too far. Even at the bar of the Calvary and Guards Club one couldn't boast about homosexual, paedophiliac incest with any confidence of a favorable reception. p.71

The interesting thing about Caligula, is that he intended to be a model emperor, and for the first few months of his reign he was praised for his magnanimity. But the compulsion to repeat what one has experienced is like gravity, and it takes special equipment to break away from it. p.89

The claim that every man kills the thing he loves seemed to him a wild guess compared with the near certainty of a man turning into the thing he hates. p.305

All I can say is the Great Barrier Reef is the most vulgar thing I've ever seen. It's one's worst nightmare, full of frightful loud colours, peacock blues, and impossible oranges all higgledy-piggledy while one's mask floods. p.395

Once you got words  you thought the world was everything that could be described, but it was also what couldn't be described. In a way things were more perfect when you couldn't describe anything.  Once you locked into language, all you could do was shuffle the greasy pack of a few thousand words that millions of people had used before. There might be little moments of freshness, not because the life of the world has been successfully translated but because a new life has been made out of this thought stuff. p.460

Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See, Juliann Garey

I close my eyes and breathe in one more time. And then I know- the church smells just like our dogs' feet, like the warm, soft spaces in between their toe pads. I never would have known the pleasure of that particular comfort except that once Willa made me put my nose there. After that, I did it all the time. When no one was around. Dog huffing. p.26

And most of all, I liked how her wide, deep laugh reverberated in me. How it bounced around in my empty spaces. I liked the kind of man she made me. p. 132

Once we get you stable...you might get the chance to experience those unexpected minutes or days or, if you're really lucky, weeks of honest-to-God happiness. And Greyson, if you think the rest of us so-called normal people get any more than that, I obviously need to prescribe you a stronger antipsychotic. p.283

Happy February!