Three Coherent Quotes

I'm holed up at Casa Vortex with a nasty case of Strep. Thankfully, all I can expose you to is cyber-breath. The debilitating body aches are gone; the bowling ball that was my head yesterday has returned to normal. Hooray for coherent thought.

One of my ambitious holiday gift projects involves writerly sayings. My search for inspiration online netted me more than I'll ever use, but I found a quote that could not have been more perfect for me:

"Without a pen I feel naked, but it's writing that is my exhibitionism." ~Carrie Latet

If we were to meet at, say, a holiday party, I'd be the one blending into the curtains at the room's periphery. I'd stare out the window and you'd think me aloof. Really, I'd be be so painfully trapped in my introversion, I'd long for the pate to sprout lips and start a conversation so I wouldn't have to. Speak about Desmond Morris's fifth stage of intimacy? I'd rather skewer my eyeballs with a fireplace poker. Write about it? Now you're talking. Maybe I view the playground of the mind as sacred, something that loses its magic when drizzled out past the tongue.

Here's another quote that made me stop and think:

"No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman." ~Van Wyck Brooks

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Mr. Brooks was a historian, biographer and American literary critic just after the turn of the twentieth century. He received a Pulitzer in 1937 for his novel, The Flowering of New England. This quote makes me want to read something he wrote, even a snippet. Do his words slant romantic? Is there a subtle rawness only a woman could appreciate?

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Lastly, I found this one:

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"One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in other's minds." ~Alfred Kazin

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What a perfectly-wrapped gift this quote is for me. It is as if the writer must ask for permission to enter a reader's mind, dance that awkward moment of first introductions and engage in a subtle give and take until residence is established. And, there is the time thing. The ultimate time travel for a writer. The days and months I spend in creation answered months, even years, later in the reader's hours of experience.

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Do you have a favorite quote? Share it, and tell us why it speaks to you.