The March Scrapbook—A Living Document

At any given point, I am both literally and mentally carrying around a collection of scraps and quotes from what I've been reading and encountering.

Fiction makes one hell of a buffer for reality, an indirect way of bouncing off our thoughts, emotions, experiences, etc.. (I'm a geek about the actual psychological experience of reading itself and how it helps us excavate meaning from our lives.)

Some quotes come from what I'm currently reading. Others might be Pinterest saves, hall of fame refrains, or even lyrics. A small scattering:

“'What do you want from me?' he asks. What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him. More. — Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road.”

Thanks for reading Words Like Silver! Subscribe for free to support my work.

Subscribe Now

placeholder

“Courage presupposes that you have an understanding of the possible consequences of your actions. But, of course, that is not always the case. — Erling Kagge, After the North Pole.”

“Truthfully, his only task was to create opportunities for luck, which only stirred if it was provoked. — Albert Camus, The Plague.”

“'What we expect,' he told us, 'is all you have to give.' — Dick Couch, The Warrior Elite”

“The world asks of us only the strength we have and we give it. Then it asks more, and we give it. — Jane Hirshfield, The Weighing.”

“Faith, as I imagine it, is tensile, and cool, and has no need of words. Hope, I know, is a fighter and a screamer. — Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems.”

“It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder. — George Saunders, Congratulations by the Way.”

“One kind of hope...comes without the burden of responsibility. The onus is on the universe to make things better. Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve the future. — Grit, Angela Duckworth.”

“After all, one should have the courage to believe in what is good. I do not mean that one should believe in illusions, but I mean that one should do only what is true and good and take it for granted that other people will do the same, in a way one can never do with the intellect alone. — Sophie Scholl.”

“For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have. — Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance. — James Baldwin.”

“—whether he’s 'for real' depends now less on what’s in his heart than on what might be in yours. Try to stay awake. — David Foster Wallace, Up, Simba!”

“Self-confidence can make you try harder—but it can also work in more subtle ways. Telling runners they look relaxed makes them burn measurably less energy to sustain the same pace. Giving rugby players a postgame debriefing that focuses on what they did right rather than what they did wrong has effects that will linger a full week later, when the positive-feedback group will have higher testosterone levels and perform better in the next game. Even doing a good deed—or imagining yourself doing a good deed—can enhance your endurance by reinforcing your sense of agency...What's central is strong belief. — Alex Hutchinson, Endure.”

“To listen well is to figure out what’s on someone’s mind and to demonstrate that you care enough to want to know. It’s what we all crave: to be understood as a person with thoughts, emotions, and intentions that are unique and valuable and deserving of attention…what makes us feel most lonely and isolated in life is less often the result of a devastating traumatic event than the accumulation of occasions when nothing happened but something profitably could have. — Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening.”

“Studying him, I had time to realize I was scared of him. Spending time with him was like opening a window to get air. I didn't know why he chose me to share his blood with when we were kids. And I supposed that's what happens when someone who awes you also chooses to be interested in you. You can't help but fear it, and you don't want to let it disappear, and you want to be enough to deserve it. I guessed that was a story as old as time. — Jodi Lynn Anderson, Each Night Was Illuminated.”

“The poem is written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. — Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays.”

“You only ever get to feel certain about the future once it’s already turned into the past. — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks.”

“It’s as if all the knowledge I’ve soaked in during the past months has coalesced and lifted me to a peak of light and understanding. This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one. This is joy. And now that I’ve found it, how can I give it up? Life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have. I am in love with what I am doing, because the answer to this problem is right here in my mind, and soon—very soon—it will burst into consciousness. — Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon.”

“Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey-castle sequence of bumpings-into and tumblings-apart. — Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet.”

“All over again, the shade, the trees, and the birds; I think, what makes you believe you deserve anything? — L.E. Groves.”