Quotables

One of my goals for this year (which I should probably share for accountability's sake but then what if I fail??) was to read 125 books and to take notes while reading...Not like "there will be a quiz on this" type notes but just jotting down quotes or ideas worth remembering. Gretchen Rubin says that being a notorious note-taker has aided her tremendously in the writing of each of her books. And not that I'm going to be cranking out any NYT Bestsellers anytime soon (someday? ha!) but I liked the idea.

Sometimes these notes are thought-provoking, sometimes inspiring, sometimes humorous, and most of the time they're just so well-written that I feel they deserve to be preserved (you know, in the super-special gilded pages... of my iPhone Notes.)

Here are a few of the quotes I've jotted down over the past few months and books:

"Cassandra always hid when she read, thought she never knew quite why. It was if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong." Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden (I definitely identify with that feeling!)

"The amateur works until he can get it right. The professional works until he cannot go wrong." Julie Andrews, Home: My Early Years (Wow! I've never thought about it like that but it definitely makes sense.)

"Sally wasn't really very pretty, but no one ever noticed because she behaved as if she were." Kristin Levine, The Lions of Little Rock (Truth, right?)

"To think was to dip the paint-loaded brush of doubt into the clear water of certainty." Kate Morton, The Distant Hours (I think?) (Seriously, that woman has a way with words.)

"Fear of trials sometimes depletes more energy than facing trials! Once we accept the inevitability of hardship, we can redirect our focus from fear to faithfulness." Beth Moore, Paul (I'm doing this Bible study and I'm pretty sure I could include quotes from every single day. I love Beth Moore and I'm convinced when I move to Houston we'll become bffs who meet for coffee.)

"As usual, we were supposed to spend 15 minutes jotting down our deep and cosmic thoughts about the quote while the teacher checked her deep and cosmic email." Jordan Sonnenblick, Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip (This guy is the master of YA and capturing the teenage voice... a perfect mix of sarcasm and heart.)

"He was an English teacher and thought life should have a topic sentence." Beverly Cleary, Sister of the Bride (I will never not love Beverly Cleary and I also think life should have a topic sentence.)

"But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not steal past those watchful dragons? I thought I could." C.S. Lewis, quoted by John Granger in Looking for God in Harry Potter (This was a fascinating book but I especially loved this quote about the Narnia series.) 

Have you read anything good... even quotable... lately? 


Ash