The September Scrapbook—A Living Document
Quotes I've encountered in September that I'm loving—continually updated and curated.
Published September 3, 2025
Admittedly, I did not update the August iteration of this as much as I intended to; the month flew by, and I didn't have my laptop for a solid chunk of it (ideal.)
I'm school-year-wired in that I always get a major burst of energy around this time of year.
Writer-wise, there's also a major trend right now of everyone leaning into "personal research" and "curricula" in an overt, studied way—partly the antithesis to perceived anti-intellectualism as a whole right now, and partly the boom of Substack rewarding that sort of templated approach to reading and writing. Whatever gets the people goin'!
My answer to this is my usual monthly batch: a happy list, an audio audit, and of course, my dear ol' scrapbook.
So far, my gathered quotes are a bit pithy—snappy and short, with the type of motto you'd see embroidered on a pillow, perhaps. But I'm okay with that. Judging by my first few chapters reading, there'll also be a fair bit excerpted from Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America.
“I and this mystery here we stand. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself.”
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. — George Bernard Shaw.”
“Our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. — John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley.”
“To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. — Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose.”
“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you. — Frank Lloyd Wright.”
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Beholder.”
“Point bein some people will actually tell you what it is they aim to do to you and whenever they do you might want to listen. — Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men.”
“Tell me this string of selves ends in light. — Avni Vyas, Minotaur's Love Song.”
“I discovered long ago in collecting and classifying marine animals that what I found was closely intermeshed with how I felt at the moment. External reality has a way of being not so external after all. — John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley.”
“You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days. — Alain de Botton”
“Sometimes I am impatient with those who think themselves kind when their only thought is to preserve themselves from the discomfort of observed pain. — John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters.”
“Guilt is always stronger than logic. — Fredrik Backman, The Winners.”
“There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back. — Charles de Lint (??? Source is murky.)”
