Quote Round-Up: March 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!

Happy Birthday!

Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), March 2

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...

Being crazy isn't enough.

John Irving, March 2

Oh FUCK the longings and agonies of youth.

James Merrill, March 3

The day is breaking someone else's heart.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, March 6

The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not- when they strayed from the straight and narrow is was something so unusual for them that they bragged about love as if they had just invented it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, March 6

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

Mickey Spillane, March 9

I don't like people. I don't like any kind of people. When you get them together in a big lump they all get nasty and dirty and full of trouble. So I don't like people including you. That's what a misanthropist is.

Douglas Adams, March 11

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

Don't Panic. 

Jack Kerouac, March 12

One day I will find the right words and they will be simple.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

John Updike, March 18

It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.

If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.

Phillip Roth, March 19

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

Lois Lowry, March 20

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.

Ovid, March 20

Militiae species amor est. (Love is a kind of warfare.)

Flannery O'Connor, March 25

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

Robert Frost, March 26

If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.

Tennessee Williams, March 26

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

Erica Jong, March 26

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course, Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

Mario Vargas Llosa, March 28

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy year later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space.