Quotes and Questions

Button courtesy of The Broke and The Bookish
with alteration by me.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created by the folks at The Broke and the Bookish just because they like making lists.  I frequently see participant's posts on blogs I read, but I've never taken part.  And I'm not actually taking part now, because it's not Tuesday.  You're supposed to look at next week's topic in advance and prepare your list to post on the assigned day.  Yeah, and you're "supposed to" get a Nebraska driver's license within thirty days of moving here, but we know how that goes.  It goes to the tune of $73 when the patrolman discovers you've lived here 14 months and still haven't done it, that's how it goes! So, in keeping with my rebel spirit, I'm posting my Top Ten Tuesday on Friday.  Viva la Revolucion...or whatever!

This week's topic was Top 10 favorite quotes from books.  I can't honestly say these are THE best lines, I can't even limit myself to ten, but these are SOME of the best of the ones I remembered to write down somewhere so I would remember them later when an appropriate occasion arose - but that's too long to write in the title space.

And while we're on the topic of writing them down, does anyone have a good system for keeping track of quotes you like?  I've tried writing them in a notebook but I forget to do it and sometimes the passages are too long to write out long-hand.  The ones that I have mentioned on the blog I have just printed, cut and physically pasted into the notebook.  I could make a separate blog page solely for quotes or I could create a Pinterest board.  Anyone have experience with these ideas, or have better ones?  I would love to hear some ideas.

1. "Love what you love without apology." - The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth 

2. "Probably she was sitting propped up in bed reading and heard the brush of wings and smelled the cold clean air and the angel appeared like a deer in the bedroom and Evelyn said 'Not yet, I have to finish this book.'" - Pontoon by Garrison Keillor

3. "He talked of the future so easily...But she couldn't start this because then it would end.  Stories like this always ended.  She couldn't take this pleasure, because she would spend the rest of her life missing it, hurting from it." - Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

4. "Our mother shook her head...'You girls are all the same like that.  I don't know what we did to give you the idea that you had to be some master in your field by the time you were thirty'...'I don't really want to be a master in my field,' Bean said, 'but I'd like not to be a complete and total f***-up.'  Here we expected our mother to rebuke Bean for her language, but she didn't.  She just smiled indulgently and said, 'Oh, Honey, we're all f***-ups in our own special way.'" - The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

5. "industrial-strength not happy" - If You Were Here by Jen Lancaster

6. "Being met by the sharp scent of chocolate mingling with the moist scent of brewing coffee had a dark, secretive feel to it, like Willa had finally found the perfect place to hide." - The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

7. The Captain attempts to explain Heaven:  "It's all the beauty and serenity and nobility you have ever experienced on earth.  It's all your grandest and most generous feelings, and the finest sunsets and greatest music - and then you're only on the fringe of understanding." - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick

8. "I'm sorry that we worried the children, but I've spent most of my adult life worrying about them, so I'm gonna call it even." - The Leisure Seekers by Michael Zadoorian

9.  "I wanted more than anything to be that girl, to be a child again and carry crocus or hawthorn or larkspur instead of buckets of thistle...I wanted to start my life over, on a course that would not lead to this moment...Every decision I'd ever made had led me here, and I wanted to take it all back, the hatred and the blame and the violence.  I wanted to have lunch with my angry ten-year-old self, to warn her of this morning and give her the flowers to point her in a different direction." - The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

10.  "This the kind of story we learn over and over again about everything in the world: your life starts out as a wild open frontier that you explore until the forces of time or history or civilization or nature intervene, and then suddenly it's all gone, it all weathers and falls down and gets built over; everyone dies or moves away or becomes a grainy photograph, and yes, at some point you just get fat and fall off a streetcar.  Progress - it dumps you on your aging and gigantic ass!" - The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure

11.  "He had been smart enough not to have children, so he could never know the peculiar sensation of caring terribly, insanely for a person over whom you had no control; a person who was your responsibility, yet no longer had to answer to you." - Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan.

12.  "'I have everything I've ever wanted right here and now.  My house, my friends, Luc.'  She gave me a stubborn look.  'I'm not going to have any of that taken away from me,' she declared mutinously. . .'Don't look like that, girl.'  Armande gave me a rallying nudge.  'After a five-course banquet, you'd want coffee and liqueurs, wouldn't you? You wouldn't suddenly decide to ruin it all of with a bowl of pap, would you?  Just so you could have an extra course? . . . I'm saying you need to know when to stop, Vianne.  You need to know when to push away your plate and call for those liqueurs.'" -  Chocolat by Joanne Harris