Quotations

When I was about fifteen year old, I began to really start getting into reading. All of a sudden I felt a connection to books, and the more I read, the better I felt. This was a shock, even to me at first, because I had previously publicly announced my hatred for all books. Just a year before, no one could inspire me to read anything. In school I was forced to read certain books and one day, I figured for some reason that I would actually choose one to read on my own. I began reading The Catcher in the Rye and I literally couldn't put it down. My fondest memory reading that book was finishing it outside on the porch in my father's apartment in the pouring rain. Everything at that moment just felt perfect. Ever since then I have been somewhat "hooked on books" (I just made that up). A few years ago I was inspired by my stepmother to record my favorite passages and quotes from the books I have read. By doing this, I am creating my own book filled with the best moments from what seem like distant memories of my own. Unfortunately I have not added anything since last summer but as I look through my almost completed book-journal today, I figured I would share a few quotes. I starting writing dates later by each book I entered because they represent the person I was at the moment that I wrote the quote down. It is funny to read them now and either still feel attachment or not recognize what I found so profound in the words.

"My dear countryman, companion, renowned discoverer of Musca pragensis, heroic laborer on the scaffoldings, I can no longer bear to watch you standing stock-still in the water! You're going to catch your death of cold! Friend! Brother! Stop torturing yourself! Get out! Go to bed. Be happy you're forgotten. Snuggle into the self shawl of universal amnesia. Stop thinking about the laughter that wounded you- it no longer exists, that laughter, it no longer exists just as your years on the scaffoldings and your glory as a victim of persecution no longer exist. The chateau is quiet, open the window and the fragrance of the trees will fill your room. Breathe."

-Milan Kundera, Slowness (August 2009)

"I was exhausted. You should sleep. Wake up early. That's not the way. It's the same. It means less that way. We sleep when we fall. We only sleep when we can't move anymore. That's juvenile. But it means everything. It's the illusion of progress. Staying awake isn't progress. The illusion is enough."

-Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!

"I been away a long time."

-Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"Atticus, are we going to win it?"
"No honey."
"Then why-"
"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win," Atticus said.

-Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

"It was this burning, which I couldn't stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn't get the sun off me by stepping forward. But I took a step, one step, forward."

-Albert Camus, The Stranger

"Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up and grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of those malenky machines."

-Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

As I type these out now I realize how many quotes I have written down. I always figured it was a way to record my thoughts, just written down more profoundly and clearly than I ever could. It's been almost five years now since I have been doing this. If I ever lose track of myself or someone asks me who I am and I do not know how to answer, I'll just hand them this book, and I think they will know.