Sunday, July 27, 2008

Two passages

I was looking at some other blogs and came across this entry and it reminded me of the one time I wrote down two passages from Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler that I really loved and thought made a lot of sense.

"People imagine that missing a loved one works kind of like missing cigarettes...The first day is really hard but the next day is less hard and so forth, easier and easier the longer you go on. But instead it's like missing water. Every day, you notice the person's absence more." From page 111

"She started to speak, but then stopped. Anything she could think of to say seemed a mistake. In face, speech in general seemed a mistake. It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work." From page 162

Like I said this is the only time I've ever written down something I've liked from a book. The two passages were written on a back of a page-a-day calendar page and I've saved it and known where it is for probably 6 or 7 years. Because I've written the words down they do tend to pop up in my thoughts from time to time. They've stuck with me as all good parts of a book should. It would be nice to start to keep track of these sorts of things in a book. Something to think about...

2 comments:

Jill said...

Thanks so much for giving me the heads up to your link...and I always love to find a new book blog. I love Anne Tyler, and your quotes make me want to re-read that book.

I highly recommend a book journal...I love a writer who can turn a good phrase.

Lori said...

I thought the same thing, I might re-read that book too!