Writing is like being able to put life into a snow globe. It takes the things that are too big and scary and reduces them into a form that I can put away when I want and look at from a distance. It also takes all that’s good in life and captures it into something I can take out when I want and look at close up and keep forever. It makes the bad things into something I can hold…and the good things into something I can hold onto. Both help so much that I need that little souvenir of life.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Improper Poll: A New Season of Hoarding

Here is a confession: I hoard ideas. Just like the people you see on those hoarding shows. My computer is a metaphor for some of those houses. A computer expert friend of mine once commented about how I have a lot of “…ah…folders and…items” on my computer. It was clear during those pauses that he was choosing his words very carefully so as not to insult me about my stuff. My junk.

And he was right. There’s stuff everywhere. Word stuff. Words from songs and little kids and religious leaders and friends and posters and cartoons and famous people. Some are possibly your words. I started to say, “some of the greatest minds in history,” but they are all great minds in history. The thing that makes a mind great is the way it happens to fit its time—the relevance of the connections it makes. And all of them are relevant. Every single one makes me think or laugh or reflect or feel.

Just like words are supposed to do.

So. Do you have a favorite quote you’d care to share?

10 comments:

  1. My favorite quote is from Mark Twain:
    "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not."

    -- K

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  2. I love Guy Du Maupassant's (spelling?) "Get black on white." It says it so succinctly and these days, it makes us think because it catches us off guard.

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  3. As a former teacher of at-risk students, I am partial to: "I don't know what the future holds, but I know who holds my future."

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  4. From the great Jimmy Durante: "What elephant????"

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  5. "WELCOME. To the REAL world."

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  6. "I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall." Elanor Roosevelt.

    Just had to send you a smile. :)
    Jules @ Trying To Get Over The Rainbow

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  7. I have way too many and none that I can come up with right now.

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  8. I couldn't isolate one especial quote when I first read this, but one I use a lot is "To suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy" [Robert Doisneau]
    Thanks for your comment on my BBF post - much appreciated.

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  9. William Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit." I use that quote a LOT! Good post, sister!!!

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  10. Don't know if this originated with Truett Cathy, founder of Chick-fil-A, but he's the one I heard say it: "If it's going to be, it's up to me!"

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