Hello again! This week Mama Kat invited us to share some favorite quotes. Cool!
I am a quote fiend. A quote fanatic. Quote-and-prose obsessed, it is fair to say. So narrowing down my list of faves was not easy. But this month our famous little Oklahoma book club is reading both One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Don’t we have good taste?
Anyway, these two books are rife with well crafted, substantial lines. And as I am reading through the latter title I am recording in a fresh new spiral notebook all the sentences that speak to me. It’s so fun! Believe it or not this is my first time reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and I clearly see why it is a beloved American classic. So good. I am halfway through and have cried three times and laughed a lot more.
I will admit that taking so many notes alongside reading just a 248 page book is taking me an inordinate amount of time. Maybe I should just read it straight through? I don’t know. But every paragraph is a gem. It’s all so beautifully written and filled with good messages, how can I pick a favorite even from this one book?
Here is one that glows on the page and is so relevant to my life right now:
It can be difficult, right? Abandoning the need for approval or affirmation when we think we’re doing ok? And on the flipside it can be tempting to preen our egos with other people’s approval despite what we know about ourselves deep down. It’s a cheap balm. Both are traps. Caring too much about what other people think while neglecting our well bred conscience, it’s dangerous. It starves us. Distracts us from the real work and joy of living.
Which leads me to an older, better known quote:
A clean conscience is a soft pillow.
Thanks for the short, sweet writing prompt, Mama Kat! You da real MVP. But don’t take my word for it.
That’s the kinda thing you hafta know for yourself.
XOXOXOXO
I’m not sure if I would be able to pick just one quote from TKAM either. But I love the idea of reading it and writing down the phrases that speak to you. I often do that in any ol’ book I’m reading but instead of writing it down I just underline it. Writing it down might make it stick in my head a little better. Here is a bit I underlined and then took a pic of b/c it hit me so hard.
“the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. there was no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had dies, and he was more alone than he had ever been before” – Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince
I love “To Kill a Mockingbird”! It actually took me years before I got around to reading it. Now I have re-read it several times. I do that too, write down favorite quotes in my journal! I will jot down favorite lines from books, song lyrics, and anything else I find, movies! It’s cool that you do that too. I think I would get through the book faster if I read it all the way and then wrote down quotes, phrases, ect. I’m always scared I’ll forget one though as I read further. So, I stop to write it down. Which I usually don’t find a book I want to speed through.
I haven’t read TKAM since I was in high school! Such a great book and what a great quote. So true!