Category: favourite quotes

Me and Mrs Jones: Telling it like it is

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Other people’s words about … social media

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t do Facebook or Instagram .
(Or Pinterest … Or Snapchat.) And I never, ever take selfies.
Blogging is as far as I go.
One of the reasons is this:
It’s a bright, shiny world out there on social media.
Everything is beautiful in Insta-World.
But that’s not real life.
Life is a series of moments — some of them beautiful, some of them not —
and social media doesn’t capture that.
Here’s what lovely blogger Sheena has to say on the subject:

Social media is great, right? It’s the perfect way for me to stay connected to friends, see the world from different points of view, I can use it to work from home, and let’s all agree….it’s fun! It’s also the WORST….we all paint this picture of the perfect little world we live in–only showing our best of the best moments….it’s not at ALL a real representation of life. And I think sometimes it’s too easy to get caught up in that, don’t you think?

You’ve heard the term “Keeping up with the Joneses”, right? Did you know the phrase dates back to the early 1900s? I mean really, what was it that Jones Family was doing that was worth keeping up with–growing better potatoes? Riding a faster horse? Now, with social media, we know every little detail of the Joneses life. Where they are going and who they are with and how they got there! What they are eating and when they are eating it! What their perfect house looks like, what their perfect kids look like, and what their perfect face looks like, because now the Joneses share lots of pictures of their outstretched arms and close-up faces. They definitely didn’t have to worry about selfies back in 1913.

Those Joneses are BUSY, and they are everywhere. Doing everything. And rubbing it in your face.

Behind the square (1 October 2015)
from the little red house

My take?
Life isn’t picture-perfect.
And that’s —
just —
fine.

The chef gets healthy

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Other people’s words about … life

Cookbooks are all about food and cooking, right?
But here’s what I found in a cookbook I borrowed from the library recently:

I generally don’t get into the whole ‘life quote’ thing; I pop them in a basket with mason jars and hip-hop yoga. But there’s a snowboarder I follow on Instagram called Kevin Pearce … who listed the non-negotiables in his life and it really stuck with me. I adapted the list to suit my life, but the fundamentals are still the same. When I am disciplined about making time for these rules, I find everything else falls into place easily and I am a better person, inside and out. That’s a good thing, right?
Make space for this:

  • Start the day with exercise.
  • Do yoga or meditate (even just 5 minutes): morning, noon and night.
  • Eat a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner.
  • Prepare food in advance so there’s no excuse to eat crap.
  • Drink lots of water, at least 2 litres a day.
  • Get outside, look around (not down at your screen) and listen.
  • Be present!
  • Take care of hygiene.
  • Read and learn something new every day.
  • Keep in touch with friends and family.
  • Lead with your heart and keep your mind close behind.
  • Remember that conscious breathing will always centre you.
  • Be appreciative and be patient.
  • Surround yourself with awesome, like-minded people.
  • Sleep and rest, as much as you feel you need.

from ‘The Chef Gets Healthy’
by Tobie and Georgia Puttock

I have to confess: the recipes in the cookbook didn’t do much for me. I like my carbs! (Tobie and Georgia have eschewed carbs in the name of health.)
But I loved Tobie’s list.
It’s a recipe for life, not just for food.
And, as with all the best recipes, you can adapt it and make your own.
It’s a starting-point, I think —
a good one, too.

About a dog

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Other people’s words about … pets

No words from me today — just a quote.
Anyone reading this who has a dog will, I think, smile and nod in recognition.

The dog stretched out and dropped his head onto my lap. Instantly he began to snore and I admired his opportunism and the detail of his design. The seams of his eyelids and the way they met perfectly, sealing him shut. The backward slant of tufty eyelids; a dense ridge of tiny hairs. And the odd crazy whisker that sprouted from his head, feeling its way out into the world. I flicked one and he twitched but he knew it was just me. And with my other hand I stroked him long and hard and felt the thick grease of his fur rise and coat my hand. He soothed me; he always did.

From In my house
by Alex Hourston

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Other people’s words about … loneliness

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Jack realised then that his father had stopped smoking. He was profoundly impressed. It made him realise as other things had not how important this job was to Jerry. He felt that perhaps older people needed satisfactory jobs even more than young ones; they had narrower worlds. They needed hard edges, secure boundaries to their lives. Somehow this made Jerry seem remote: Jack had never felt this before.

He listened, grinned, joked, and all the time there was this unassuageable pain of loneliness in his heart. It wasn’t a boy’s loneliness any longer, but a man’s. He felt he might go through life with this longing, this sensation that there was a pit inside him, never to be filled. He faced up to it, looked at it carefully: it was like a kind of haunting, as irrational and inherently terrifying. Now he knew he had seen its traces on many faces. It was what made old people withdraw into themselves, peering out suspiciously through tiny windows at the world, as the reclusive pensioners of Towser’s house peered at him. it was not that they were defensive in their loneliness: it had changed them to a different kind of person, that was all.

From Ruth Park’s ‘Swords and Crown and Rings’

Ruth Park is most famous for her novel The Harp in the South. She also wrote a much-loved series for young children called the Muddle-Headed Wombat books. In my adolescence, I devoured her novel for young adults, Playing Beattie Bow.

I hadn’t read any of her other novels until I came across Swords and Crowns and Rings at my library. Written in 1977, it’s a wonderful read, full of observations and thoughts still relevant today.

This I love: this unassuageable pain of loneliness in his heart.

Words like that — they quicken your heart.

 

Rebecca and the sea

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Other people’s words about … the sea

You could hear the sea from here. You might imagine, in the winter, it would creep up on to those green lawns and threaten the house itself, for even now, because of the high wind, there was a mist upon the window-glass, as though someone had breathed upon it. A mist salt-laden, borne upwards from the sea. A hurrying cloud hid the sun for a moment as I watched, and the sea changed colour instantly, becoming black, and the white crests with them very pitiless suddenly, and cruel, not the gay sparkling sea I had looked on first.

from Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier

The sea in Rebecca is a hidden menace — sometimes beautiful, more often ominous.
I think it’s a wonderful book.

Other people’s words about … the sea

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The moonlight held all in bond, bleached and austere.
Jackie could hear, far away, the flat sea plodding in and out, dragging its pebbles after it.

From ‘Swords and Crowns and Rings’
by Ruth Park

Ruth Park wrote largely between 1950-90, yet her writing — its themes, characters, emotions, even its ‘Australian-ness’ — still rings true for me.

Note:
This is the first in an occasional series of quotes from writers writing about the sea.I live by the sea; I love the sea; and I set both of my books by the sea. Sea-themed quotes seem kind of appropriate!

Reading Elizabeth Taylor (again)

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Other people’s words

I’ve talked before about the writer Elizabeth Taylor: her pithy, devastating prose.

How’s this?

The town seemed to her to be England at its worst, full of people trying to enjoy themselves and not managing it for various reasons — perhaps chiefly those of the weather and the deeply-rooted dullness it had caused.

from ‘The Soul of Kindness‘
by Elizabeth Taylor

One sentence says so much, doesn’t it?

Reading Elizabeth Taylor

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On the lonely horror of writing

At the thought of work, of the book he was writing, must finish, his stomach lurched, just as if he had come unexpectedly on something repellent. He was scared, too. Nowadays, he was so frightened of sitting down to work that he had to drive himself to grapple with it.

from ‘The Soul of Kindness‘
by Elizabeth Taylor

I love Elizabeth Taylor’s novels.

Her observations about people, (English) society and life are  acute, pithy and devastating.

Try her sometime!

 

Note:
Two people drew my attention to the writing of the English novelist, Elizabeth Taylor, who died in 1975. One was my mother, an inveterate and highly intelligent reader. The other was one of my favourite bloggers, Jane Brocket.

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Other people’s words again

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A word in your ear about the Brontes …

Lena has brought Wuthering Heights with her. It’s one of her favorites; she’s read it six times. Aviva borrowed it from her once but found Heathcliff repellent, Catherine incomprehensible. The characters gnashed their teeth, shrieked, struck their heads on hard objects until they bled. Everyone sneered and was agitated. Aviva doesn’t understand what Lena finds so compelling.
“It’s the way Heathcliff can’t think about anything but her,” says Lena. “The way he would rather be damned to hell — and they really believed in hell back then — than be separated from her.”
“I wouldn’t want him to think about me even for a minute,” says Aviva. “Him and those dogs? Please.”

from ‘The Virgins’
by Pamela Erens.

I’ve never been a fan of the Brontes. (Jane and Rochester? Please.)
It appears I’m in good company!