Because I like things just so, my daughter spends as much of her day as possible destroying my house. And topping her list of destruction is throwing books off the bookshelves. And, confession, I own lots of books. Lots and lots of books. And I get rid of them all the time. But then I buy more. I’ve always said that my dream job would be to lie in bed and read books all day, but since no one has offered me that job yet and my ass probably couldn’t handle it, I just buy, read, recommend, and then purge. It’s a wonderful cycle.
But this also means I have lots of books, lots of bookshelves, and lots of potential destruction zones for Elliott. While she was ripping down books yesterday, I found one I hadn’t looked at in a while. I read books for different purposes and this particular book was for “thinking”…which means I underlined and highlighted passages. And after skimming the book, I still found them as profound and insightful as before when I read it (2002, as noted in the front cover) that I thought I would share some of them here. And, if after hearing the tidbits, you’re interested in the book, it’s entitled Fifty Days of Solitude by Doris Grumbach.
-“I went back to the book I had been reading, Elizabeth Drew’s The Modern Novel, in which she says that ‘the test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.’ “
-“In the silence I eagerly sought, I could hear myself think, and what I heard was, sadly, often not worth listening to.”
-“Being an inattentive driver, I often failed to see the signs and then was jolted out of my driving reveries by hitting the heave, hard. Then I was alert, watching for the next BUMP sign. The lesson was: words are not as powerful as acts. Show, do not tell.”
-“The mind must not be occupied with persons; de personis non curandum.” -Monsieur Teste
-“People who cannot bear to be alone are the worst company.” -Albert Guinon
And finally, “I have learned that, until death, it is all life.” -Don Quixote
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