Whitney’s Comments (group member since Dec 10, 2015)

Whitney’s comments from the Snippets That Inspire group.

This from Tim Brown on 7/18/18 who shared this:

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it...

Based on "When the Heart Waits" by Sue Monk Kidd:

The caterpillars did not know it at the time, but their cocoons would transform them entirely. Once their cocoons opened to the light, they found they could fly. They had wings! And they flew past all the struggling caterpillars. Flying, to their delight, turned out to be The Best Way to get to the top. Thus, they found, they had made their deepest progress standing still.

From The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: A Novel (Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer)

I will tell you now about our roast pig. The Germans were fussy over farm animals. Pigs and cows were kept strict count of. Guernsey was to feed the German troops stationed here and in France. We ourselves could have the leavings, if there were any. How the Germans did favor book-keeping. They kept track of every gallon we milked, weighed the cream, recorded every sack.

They would make surprise visits to your farm, and your number of living pigs had better tally up with their number of living pigs. One pig less and you were fined, one time more and you could be arrested and sent to jail in St. Peter Port. If too many pigs went missing, the Germans figured you were selling on the Black Market, and you were sent to a labor camp in Germany. With the Germans you never knew which way they’d blow—they were a moody people.

Will Thisbee had a sickly pig who died. The AO came out and wrote a Certificate saying the pig was truly dead and left Will alone to bury the poor animal. But Will didn’t—he hied off through the wood with the little body and gave it to Amelia Maugery. Amelia hid her own healthy pig and called the AO saying, “Come quick, my pig has died.” The AO came out right away and, seeing the pig with its toes turned up, never knew it was the same pig he’d seen earlier that morning. He inscribed his Dead Animal Book with one more dead pig.

We could do this till the pig turned rank. The Germans caught on finally and began to tattoo each pig and cow at birth, so there was no more dead animal switching.

Amelia’s pig made us a fine dinner—there were onions and potatoes to fill out the roast. We had almost forgotten how it felt to have full stomachs, but it came back to us. With Amelia’s curtains closed against the sight of the German battery, and food and friends at the table, we could make believe that none of it had happened.

Today's quote is from Hortense Calisher who said, “A short story is an apocalypse served in a very small cup.”

" Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job."
- Larry David

Author Jamaica Kincaid says, "I’m not writing for anyone at all. I’m writing out of desperation. I feel compelled to write to make sense of it for myself."

From William Butler Yeats who said, "Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."

It was author Jane Smiley who said, "Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist."

This from "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer who writes, "Reading a good book ruins you for reading a bad book."

From Soren Kierkegaard:

"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true."

From The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov:

“There was one man, but few could see him. He found a place for himself, not on the side where the ascent to the hill was open and where the execution could be watched most comfortably, but on the northern slope, which was not as gentle and accessible, but craggy, with gaps and crevasses, in one of which a sickly fig tree tried desperately to live, clutching at the heaven-cursed waterless earth.”

From “Lit” by Mary Karr:

He’s hitching the second mitten on, as Dev lurches to smooch my cheek. Hoisting him up, Warren says, I imagine what my father would’ve done with me, then do the opposite.

From Andrew Murray in a daily devotional reader entitled “Daily in his Presence”:

"How often we say God’s name without giving a thought to the indescribable privilege we enjoy being in a relationship with Him. The time we take to be with Him in our inner sanctuary will become the gateway to heaven.”

From Albert Einstein:

“A ship is always safe at shore, but that is not what it’s built for.”

From "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov:

"A third visitor sprawled insolently on the padded ottoman… namely a black tom of terrifying proportions, with a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork in the other with which he had already managed to impale a pickled mushroom."

"It is my duty as a writer to fight against all forms of censorship, whatever its forms and under whatever government it exists, and to call for freedom of the press... Any writer who tries to prove that he has no need of this freedom is like a fish that publicly declares it needs no water."

From "Making an Elephant" by Graham Swift:

For writer and reader, fiction should always have that flicker of the magical… but it also does something that’s completely the opposite. Repeatedly, fiction tries to embrace, to capture, to confront—often grimly and unflinchingly—the real.

From Simone Weil who said, "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul."

From "Me: Stories of My Life" by Katharine Hepburn who remembers leaving the family homestead after both parents had died:

"The moving out was quite a job, a very very sad job for us -- it was the end of our beginning."

From Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in.