TGIF pt 2

In the same vein as my last TGIF post, here is another strange habit of mine that involves one half of my self helping the other half when things look grim.  Specifically, this is my creative self helping my uninspired self.

The idea is simple, and Pinterest has taken it to an extreme I never could have expected.  As a lover of songs and literature, I have long since been awestruck by great writing, be it poetry, prose, lyric, or screen-quote.  Many years ago, I began keeping a log of quotes that I found particularly remarkable.

This document has a generally different effect on me than the photos I mentioned last week because the goal is not to be happy, per se.  The goal is to be inspired, to be moved, to be stirred by someone else's brilliance.  The quotes are usually thought-provoking and can be sad and dark, unlike the photos I use to pick me up on a bad day.

I have only a few rules:
1. The quotes really need to mean something to me.  They have to strike a profound cord for me to take the time to possibly look them up and
2. I have to hear/read them first-hand as part of the full piece.  Pinterest is FANTASTIC for finding great, artistic renderings of quotes (my "Well Said" board is proof that I LOVE this aspect of Pinterest), but this process is much more meaningful when you are just going about your normal day and get completely slammed by genius.

Here's a sampling.  Enjoy, and Happy Friday!

When a woman who has much to say says nothing, her silence can be deafening.
--Anna & the King

Love, like blood, is pouring out of me 

--Counting Crows, “Margery”

Bravery, my neighbor, moved away, ‘cause I don’t need to be courageous today.
--O.A.R.

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
-- George Eliot, Adam Bede

Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt
at being told that it is a fragment
awaiting perfection
--Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies

In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God.

--Braveheart

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear
--Zora Neale Hurston

We can understand the sentiments you’re saying to us, oh but sensible selves would you kindly shut up?

--Sara Bareilles

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very Heaven

--William Wordsworth

Home is the resort of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where, supporting and supported, polished friends and dear relations mingle into bliss.

--James Thomson

Armchair warriors often fail, and we’ve been poisoned by these fairy tales

--Don Henley, “The End of the Innocence”

A book is a portable kind of magic

--Stephen King

Not all those who wander are lost

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Isn't it what we wait for? To meet someone... and they're, they're like a lens and suddenly you're looking through them and everything changes and nothing can ever be the same again.

--Michael Clayton

When life gives you lemons, you paint that shit gold

--Atmosphere

It's not just about living forever, Jackie. The trick is living with yourself forever.

--Pirates of the Caribbean

Love is a woman’s special province—she has, or has had, or will have, power there.  Man might take, and absolutely appropriate, monopolize and exclude her from money-making, from politics and from many other pursuits, made difficult to her by man’s tyranny, man’s hindrances, man’s objections—but in the realms of love he is not the absolute dictator, not the master.

--Maria Amparo Ruiz de Barton, The Squatter and the Don

In a house where regret is a carousel ride, we are spinning and spinning and spinning

-- Counting Crows, “St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream”

Every man dies.  Not every man truly lives

--Braveheart

It is always surprising how small a part of life is taken up by meaningful moments. Most often they're over before they start, even though they cast a light on the future and make the person who originated them unforgettable.

-Anna & the King

And you of tender years

Can't know the fears

That your elders grew by     

--Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Teach Your Children Well

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

--J.K. Rowling

You have no soul, so how can you understand the emptiness that seeks a soul mate?

--Shakespeare in Love

You see this couple here? He's having an affair with the babysitter, and she can eat a pound cake in under a minute

--Practical Magic

Or we can paint the administration building with the word 'assholes', in various colors.

--Freedom Writers

Maybe it’s my face.  Maybe I look like a doormat today.  

--Jeanette Winters, Written on the Body

I love myself when I am laughing…and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.

--Zora Neale Hurston

See my heart, I decorate it like a grave.

--Alice in Chains, “Down in a Hole”

There’s a bold, unbridled lie where my soul once stood

--The Damwells, “Golden Days”