When I was growing up, there was always a Reader’s Digest lying around the house. I devoured those things from front to back. The articles, the laughs, and especially the Quotable Quotes. But since we’ve had kids, a Reader’s Digest subscription is just one more of the casualties of a tight budget.
Recently on Facebook, I’ve noticed friends posting quotes now and then and I really enjoy them. In fact, sometimes I copy and paste them into my “Favorite Quotes” word document. Funny, I started that doc to save quotes years ago when I was looking for the perfect quote to use at the beginning of a Historical Romance I was writing at the time, never remembering the Readers Digest page until I sat down to write this blog.
So, without further ado, I’d like to share my top ten favorite quotes from my long list.
• I believe as I did as a child, that life has meaning, direction and value; that no suffering is lost; that each drop of blood and every tear counts; and that the secret of the world is to be found in St. John’s “Deus Caritas est” – “God is love.” –Francois Mauriac
• “It takes so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover…” — Morris L. West, Shoes of the Fisherman
• Learn as if you were going to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow. — Mahatma Gandhi
• I will experience everything in life, so that on the final journey to my death, the nights will not be haunted by regret. – Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• It is the soul’s duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.” – Rebecca West
• “Dreams dwell in the hidden places of the soul.”
• “We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence upon those who would do us harm.” —-George Orwell
• “Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.” –Mark Twain
• “Revision is like wrestling with a demon, for almost anyone can write; but only writers know how to rewrite. It is this ability alone that turns the amateur into a professional.”– William Knott
• When we read good fiction it is to understand the human experience, to share or try to share, the feelings and intuitions of another. That other is a character, is an author, since, I’d argue the character is the author, at least a facet of the author, an alternative, a glimpse of, a parallel, a doppelganger, an inner being (maybe one of many), but no less human and no less revealing for being part of a part or a reflection of a dream or suppression. — Alex Keegan

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Jillian Burns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.