I read a lot… and the really good reads I like to share with you.
Remember the book A Million Miles and A Thousand Years? Have you read that one yet?
Here’s my most recent read and my favorite quotes from the book, Cold Tangerines, giving you a sneak peek on what you’re in for!
On Living…
“I know that life is busy and hard, and that there’s crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don’t. Please don’t. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader because of the art that you make. Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chose practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable.”
“The world is alive, blinking, and clicking, winking at us slyly, inviting us to get up and dance to the music that’s been playing since the beginning of time, if you bend all the way down and put your ear to the ground to listen for it.”
On Family…
“I had thought that we became a family the day we were married. What I have found though is that the web starts as just one filament on that day, and spins and spins around us as life presents itself to us day by day. And on some days the strands spin around us double time, spinning us like a top and binding us like rubber cement”
“That’s how family gets made. not be ceremonies or certificates and not by parties and celebrations. Family gets made when you decide to hold hands and sit shoulder to shoulder when it seems like the sky is falling. Family gets made when the world becomes strange and disoriented. and the only face you recognise is his. Family gets made when the future obscures itself like a solar eclipse and in the intervening darkness, you decide that no matter what happens, you’ll face it as one.”
On Friendship…
“True friendship is a sacred, important thing and it happens when we drop down into the deeper level of who we are, when we cross over into the broken, fragile parts of ourselves. We have to give up our need to be perceived as perfect. We have to give up our ability to control what people think of us. We have to overcome the fear that when they see the depths of who we are, they’ll leave. But what we give up is nothing in comparison to what this kind of friendship gives to us. Friendship is about risk. Love is about risk. If we can control it and mange it and manufacture it then its something else, but if it’s really love, really friendship its a little scary around the edges.”
On Traveling…
“Vacations are more than vacations… vacations are the act of grabbing minutes and hours and days with both hands, stealing against the inevitability of time.”
“One of the best things my dad ever said was that he never wanted school to get in the way of my education.”
“When you travel, and when you read, you are not actually alone, but rather surrounded by other worlds entirely, the footsteps and phrases of whole other lives keeping you company as you go. What I found, though, is that if you’re not chasing one fantasy, you’re chasing another.”
On Babies…
“I know when Henry is born, I will change his diapers and feed him and keep him clean and warm. Those are the physical things I can do for him. But what I want to do for him takes my breath away. I want to twist and remake the world around his little self, to shine it up and rearrange it and make it great and special for him. I want to walk ahead of him making sure things are safe, and walk behind him keeping an eye on him. I want every day of his life to be happy, and I feel like I could move the sun with the intensity I feel.”
“It makes sense to me in a new way that God chose to wrap his divinity in baby bones and baby skin. I always thought maybe it was to demonstrate vulnerability, or to identify fully with each phase of humanity, but now I think it was something else. I think it was because babies make us believe in the possibility and power of the future.”
On Life…
“If it’s not your body, its your bank account, and if nots your bank account, it’s your resume or your nose or your boobs or your car or the perfect marriage or the perfect vacation or the perfect home.”
“I didn’t have a title or a business card anymore. I felt like I didn’t have any ground to stand on, like I was in free fall. But what I found standing on that stage is that to my great surprise, I had my stories, my own experiences and mistakes and successes, and those are things you don’t give back when you turn in your keys and your laptop.”
“I believe life is a bottle rocket, a celebration, and it requires everything we have, and it demands that we battle through fear and resentment, and it demands that we release our need to be the best, the prettiest, the most perfect and together, because the big thing, the forceful beautiful thing is happening already, all around us and we might miss it if we’re too busy meeting our parents expectations or winning awards.”
On Celebration…
“Now we’re talking about celebrating. Celebrating when you think you’re calling the shots? Easy. Celebrating when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that’s when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that’s celebrating.
On Death…
“Death knocks at our doors and comes far too early for far too many of us, but when he comes for me, I want to be full-tilt, wide-open, caught in the very act of life. I think that’s what we are here for, not for the passive, peaceful life, but to stand up in the face of all that lacks peace and demand more.”
WHEW! That’s a lot of quotes – but all great ones!
I might as well type the entire book here, because there is paragraph after paragraph of wisdom and great insight in the book. It’s an easy, quick read and if these quotes sparked your interest, I hope you add it to your book list. Let me know what you think!
What book has inspired you? Leave it in the comments, I want to read it!
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