This more or less random quote from one of my favorite authors speaks strongly to me right now:

"But his cause for satisfaction was of course his ship. It seemed to him that she had never sailed so sweetly, and that her people had never worked so well and heartily together. He knew that this was almost certainly the last leg of her last voyage, but he had known that she was mortal for a great while now and the knowledge had become a kind of quiet heartbreak, always in the background, so that at present he took very particular notice of her excellence and of each day he passed on her."

from The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O'Brian.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
"Why couldn‘t she be part of that family? rent a room in someone else’s life.”

The image of renting a room in someone else's life struck me as truly wonderful.

From Marianne Wiggins, Evidence of Things Unseen, on p. 12:

... what being in the War and being in the Army had shown him was that people tend naturally toward light, toward its source, as sunflowers do in a field. People lean, either in their dreams or in their actions, toward that place where they suspect their inner lights are coming from. Whether they call it God or conscience or the manual of Army protocol, people sublime toward where their inner fire burns, and given enough fuel for thought and a level playing field to dream on, anyone can leave a fingerprint on the blank of history. That's what Fos believed.

Have you ever been in love? . . . Horrible, isn't it? . . . It makes you so vulnerable. . . . It opens your heart & it means someone can get inside & mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it, They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, & then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out & leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" . . . turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. . . . It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love. - Neil Gaiman (from Sandman)

Lynn - I liked this one so much it went on my quotes list!

Isn't it fantastic? Neil Gaiman is truly amazing. There are more Gaiman quotes that I love, but that's by far the best. Glad you liked it! :)

I have been urged to read Gaiman for probably a half dozen years -- maybe more now but have read nothing other than Coraline which I LOVE with a passion. I am reading Stardust -- wanted to see the film but didn't manage to do so and will have to await the DVD so thought I'd read the book first. Then this quote hit me like a ton of bricks -- in a good way -- so I'm going to pick up the first of the Sandman series also.

By the way GO BUCKS!!!! My husband and I are both Buckeyes -- born and raised. He is an OSU alumnus; I on the other hand graduated from Kent -- pre-1970.

Sandman is his best work. I love everything that I've read by him thus far, but Sandman. . . . that's something special. I'd never read a graphic novel before, so it was a little tough going through the first few pages, but once I got into the swing of it, it was amazing.

I love OSU, it's a great school. :)

Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and, suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that can not bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armor, we might say.


Jose Saramago in BLINDNESS

One of my favorite books, Cynthia.

This time we agree, Sherry-o. It was a fabulous book.

I don't know. I adored adored adored American Gods. I thought it was effing brilliant, both in concept and in the writing.

Ah yes..... that would be lovely.

Dottie, my husband and his family are originally from Ashland, Ohio. Huge Buckeye fans!
- Misty

In advance of our official discussion commencing in a couple of days (to use a word that Mr. Milliron or Morrie might), an excerpt from Doig's Whistling Season:

It was late in the day, and the day was late in the season. The pewter cast of light that comes ahead of winter crept into the schoolground as I performed the last of my water errands, shadows growing dusky instead of sharp almost as I watched. From the feel of the air, night would bring our first hard frost. The schoolyard seemed phenomenally empty as I crossed it this time. ... I suppose it was the point of life I was at, less than a man but starting to be something more than a boy, that set me aware of everything around, as though Marias Coulee School and its height of flagpole and depth of well were the axis of all that was in sight. ... So, there in the dwindling light of the afternoon I tried to take in that world between the manageable horizons ...

And that is but one of many -- thank you for posting it, Philip.

"I have a towel I can't throw out because it might have feelings" Dedication

I don't know why but this quotation struck me as funny and oddly truthful from Love in the Time of Cholera "..old age began with the first minor fall and that death came with the second." This was in reference to Florentino Ariza's carefulness of walking up and down a staircase

From "Another Country" by James Baldwin

"They fled, with the infection lanced but with the root of the infection still in them".

From _Waiting for Snow in Havana_ by Carlos Eire (2003), p. 12:

"The waves, those turquoise waves... lapping, lapping, lapping endlessly, eternally. Even in the worst of storms the waves were always a lover's caress, an untiring embrace, an endless shower of kisses."

This quote makes my sitting and gazing at the water as the waves ripple in, even more enjoyable, as I imagine all those wonderful kisses.

http://7art-screensavers.com/screenshots...

I really like that one, Joy. And that photo is lovely, isn't it? Being able to get to the ocean in less than twenty minutes will be one of the things I'll miss most once we retire to TX so I try to make sure we go frequently now. It's not difficult because a day near the water is also one of Jim's favorite activities.

"If you hate a person you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."- Herman Hesse

Oh, wow, that is something to ponder.

Excellent quote. I really need to think about that one.

Ann

from Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones

"My Mum belonged to all that I was trying to forget. I didn't want to forget her. But there was always a chance the other things would ride back on that memory. I'd see those soldiers again, smell my mum's fear as if she were standing right by me, here at the bus stop or in the library.

Sometimes I couldn't help it. I couldn't keep the door closed on that little room in my head where I'd put her. My mum kept her own hours and she could surprise me at any time of her own choosing."

"The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but heaven into him" Thomas Hardy

"Reading is rapture (or if it isn't, I put the book down meaning to go on with it later, and escape out the side door)."
-William Maxwell* [From Writer's Almanac for 8/16/04)
> http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ **

* William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., (1908-2000)author & fiction editor for The New Yorker magazine for 40 yrs (1936-1975)

** PS-If you haven't yet discovered "The Writer's Almanac", I suggest you take a look at it, especially if you enjoy Garrison Keillor!
> http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Joy, I couldn't reach your link. Is this it? http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/in...
That's pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.

I get the Writers Almanac email every day. It's nice.

Yes, Summer, that's the link to the article which contains my quote. My original link brought you only to the main page of the Writer's Almanac, not to the archived material. Thanks for providing the exact link for us.

Hi Ruth. Yes, I used to get the Writer's Almanac email everyday, but I couldn't keep up with it. There are just too many distractions these days. I try to keep up with it online when I can. I love the anecdotes about the famous writers. And every once in a while, I save a poem from that day's almanac.

Here's one:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Loafing

I looked into the room a moment ago,
and this is what I saw--
my chair in its place by the window,
the book turned facedown on the table.
And on the sill, the cigarette
left burning in its ashtray.
Malingerer! my uncle yelled at me
so long ago. He was right.
I've set aside time today,
same as every day,
for doing nothing at all.
-Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf
from Writer's Almanac for May 25, 2004
> http://www.writersalmanac.org/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You're right. Too much is too much. But I'd forget to go to the site, so the email is nice. I only look at the poem in the email. Like you, I save it if it's one I like.

"Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to."
-- Carl Van Doren (1886 - 1950), U.S. man of letters


"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"No iron spike can pierce the human heart as icily as a period in the right place."
Isaac Babel

"Those people who forget their own past are rewarded by having it forgotten by pretty much everyone else." Murray Kempton

"I'm so insincere that I have a certain sincerity about me."
Dennis Sampson, contemporary American poet

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Thomas Jefferson 1802

Oh dear.

Well, Jefferson seems to have been prescient but I think it's just that we've stopped paying attention to founding principles and "advice" from the founders along the way. History may prove we should have done a better job of following their promptings.

I took this and put it into my quotes page, Robt, thanks for posting it.

"And what amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like such a massive waste of energy -- and we all do it, all the people beetling along between the white lines, merging, converging, overtaking. We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love any more. And there is no logic or use to any of this, that I can see."

Anne Enright, The Gathering (Black Cat edition, New York 2007) p. 28.

"South Carolina is too small for a republic, and too large for a mental asylum."

James Pettigru, 1856

"What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective."
from "An Immodest Proposal," Joseph Brodsky

"To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness." (or something like that)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Holly
http://www.wondersandmarvels.com

Holly if that's not exact -- no matter I like that one. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw some years ago -- 'Normal people scare me.'

"What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance."
Theodore Roethke

Probably my favorite line of all time:

"My sin grew sleek on my excesses."
St. Augustine, The Confessions

Great quotes, Tom, thank you.

My favorite quote is from Molly Ivins:

"The rich buy their way out of our public institutions - - - schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, transportation and public safety, shut themselves up in gated communities - - - then contribute money to politicians who let the public infrastructure go to hell."

God rest Molly Ivins' soul. A great Texan and a great American, as Kinky Friedman would say.

I would have loved to hear Molly Ivins' comments on Palin. I miss her wit and intelligence.