Quotations
"…no person, no matter how vivid an imagination he may have, can invent anything half so droll as the freaks and fancies that originate in the lively brains of little people." -Louisa May Alcott, Little Men

"'You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.'" -Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

"'Imagination is a very dangerous thing…'" -Agatha Christie, "The Tuesday Night Club"

"'The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion.'" -Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

"'It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

"But was anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one's imagination of it?" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

"'Imagination, Miss Vinrace; use your imagination; that's where you young Liberals fail. Conceive the world as a whole.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

Quotation
"'Oh, but there's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,' wailed Anne. 'You may know a thing is so, but you can't help hoping other people don't quite think it is.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Quotations
"'And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.'" -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (Translated by Katherine Woods)

"Perhaps the reason he wanted to be alone was because he felt isolated from everybody since his talk with Dumbledore. An invisible barrier separated him from the rest of the world." -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

"As if each generation of parents commits atrocities against their children which by God's decree remain invisible to the rest of the world." -John Updike, "Flight," Pigeon Feathers

"But often now this body she wore…this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing – nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible, unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway." -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

"O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy." -William Blake, "The Sick Rose" (Songs of Experience)

"…All I want is to tell you stories about my life.

For each new friend we make, the past becomes an unintended
     secret.
An invisible hallway unfolds behind each friend's body, hidden from
     view by that friend's newness.
It makes me lonely." -Ken Chen, "3. The Invisible Memoir"

Quotation
"…but very different from the old intimacy and understanding comradeship with Ilse. Formerly it used to be a chummy jest between them that they could walk or sit for hours together and say no word and yet feel that they had had a splendid time. There were no such silences now: when they did happen to be alone together they both chattered gaily and shallowly, as if each were secretly afraid that there might come a moment for the silence that betrays." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

Random Musing
It's announcement time: Whitepoint Press has accepted my poetry collection she wears grey for publication! It's incredibly exciting. Uber exciting doesn't even begin to cover it. There will one day be a book out there with my name on it - how bizarre is that? I have to say, I feel very fortunate to have found such a good home for a collection I really am proud of.

I got this news a few months ago, but I held off on announcing anything until some headway was made in the lengthy publishing process. I was just added to the Whitepoint Press website (check out my bio here), so this felt like as good a moment as ever. I've deleted almost all the Rosemary/she wears grey poems from the blog - a contract stipulation - but no fear, you can read them all (better, edited versions for the most part) in a shiny new paperback in only so many months (I'd specify exactly how long, but I actually have no idea yet).

I'll be sure to make announcements about all of this as I get more information, so keep an eye out!

Quotations
"Life is a gift horse in my opinion." -J.D. Salinger, "Teddy," Nine Stories

"Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us. To gallop intemperately; fall on the sand tired out; to feel the earth spin; to have — positively — a rush of friendship for stones and grasses, as if humanity were over, and as for men and women, let them go hang — there is no getting over the fact that this desire seizes us pretty often." -Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

Norfolk: …to climb steep hills
Requires slow pace at first: anger is like
A full-hot horse, who being allow'd his way,
Self-mettle tires him. -William Shakespeare, Henry VIII

King Richard III: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
-William Shakespeare, Richard III

Quotation
"…but she wanted the privilege of occasional admitted sadness." -Dorothy Parker, "Big Blonde"

Quotations
"She was childish enough still to have little sense of proportion. A year, to Linda, seemed like an eternity." -Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun

"'It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by, but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fast train to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody.'" -Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

"'Thou has hit it, Dick,' quoth old Hammond; 'it is the child-like part of us that produces works of imagination. When we are children time passes so slow with us that we seem to have time for everything.'" -William Morris, News from Nowhere

"I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious, and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children's books to read." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Quotation
"…love is something that cannot be generated by any intellectual rule o' thumb."
-L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

Quotations
"'...between them was a fathomless abyss which thought itself could not cross.'" -L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

"When they turned, Pelletier and Espinoza saw an older woman in a white blouse and black skirt, a woman with a figure like Marlene Dietrich, as Pelletier would say much later, a woman who despite her years was still as strong willed as ever, a woman who didn't cling to the edge of the abyss but plunged into it with curiosity and elegance. A woman who plunged into the abyss sitting down." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. 'Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone." -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

"To feel anything strongly was to create an abyss between oneself and others who feel strongly perhaps but differently." -Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

Quotation
"But really she was impossible to describe. If you stare at the sun, soon all you see is a dark blot. That's all that can be left from something so bright. Words aren't enough." -Tanith Lee, "Ceres Passing" from Hidden Turnings

Quotation
"Secrets are generally terrible.  Beauty is not often hidden — only ugliness and deformity." -L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

Random Musing
Go vote. There's really not very much else to say. It's election day. If you're at least 18 years old and a US citizen, you need to go vote. It's important. You can't really complain about how screwed up the country is - a beloved pastime for many US citizens - if you don't at least make the effort to influence who gets to screw it up for the next four years. So go vote.

In case you needed celebrities to impress on the you the importance of voting, here you go:



And yes, the whole "make your own video" bit near the end is irrelevant at this point, but the rest is pretty spot on.

Quotations
"'November is the most disagreeable month in the whole ear,' said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.
'That's the reason I was born in it,' observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.
'If something very pleasant should happen now, we should think it a delightful month,' said Beth, who took a hopeful view of everything, even November." -Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars

"November was stingy of its sunshine that year: raw winds blew through the bare, silver-branched maple grove and the Hollow was almost constantly filled with mist…not a gracious, eerie thing like a fog but what Dad called 'dank, dark, depressing, dripping, drizzly mist.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

"'There are two adjectives that are never separated in regard to a November day — "dull" and "gloomy". They were wedded together in the dawn of language and it is not for me to divorce them now.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

"October drifted into November and the chill, drear days came.  To Cecily the whole outer world seemed the dismal reflex of her pain-bitten heart." -L.M. Montgomery, "The Promise of Lucy Ellen"

Random Musing