Gleanings from My Readings

"One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best."
--Jane Austen, in Persuasion

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“I nowadays have the feeling that not only are most bookmen eccentrics, but even the act they support—reading—is itself an eccentricity now, if a mild one. Interrupted narrative has become a natural thing. One could argue that Dickens and the other popular, serially published nineteenth-century novelists started this, and the television commercial made interruption come to seem normal. But the silicon chip has accelerated the process of interruption beyond all reckonings: iPods, BlackBerrys, laptops all break narrative into shorter and shorter sequences.”
--Larry McMurtry, in Books: A Memoir

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“It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools—friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty—and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.”
--Anne Lamott, in Traveling Mercies: Some Thought on Faith

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“There is a distinction between a lie and a mistake. And one of the functions of language is to make distinctions, not muddle them. There are so many different gradations of betrayal in politics, and it’s important to be precise about them if only for the language’s sake.

Part of the greatness of the English language is its large vocabulary, allowing us to capture a wide range of meanings and make fine distinctions. Like the difference between a falsehood and a lie. Every lie is a falsehood, but not every falsehood is a lie.”
--Paul Greenberg, editor, Arkansas Democrat Gazette (J1, 10/26/08)

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“Wilbur never forgot Charlotte . . . It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”
--E. B. White, in Charlotte’s Web

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From Robert Frost’s poem “Blueberries”:

“Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!”

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From D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Song of a Man Who Has Come Through”:

“What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels,
Admit them, admit them.”

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Happy Reading!