JAMIE BRAZIL Contemporary Romance and Young Adult fiction

I’m jumping the gun on Mother’s Day, but why not share something special when the inspiration hits?  Years ago, May 1990 to be exact, I bought a notebook.  On the pages I began what has become a collection – a collection of quotes that have caught my fancy over the years.  Decades now. 

 22 years to be exact.  

The majority of the quotes and passages I’ve copied down, a few I’ve pasted.  There’s a couple random items in there, too.  Like a handwritten Post-it, a New Yorker cartoon of Edgar Allen Poe on Prozac, and a tour ticket for Hearst Castle.  

 That said, here are ten favorites from my collection.

 He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way.  No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.  ~ from the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 Common sense is not so common ~ Voltaire

 Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life ~Picasso

 Lower than a snake with a belly full of buckshot ~ Foghorn Leghorn 

 Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it upgrades despair so beautifully. ~ from a play, “Hurrah at Last” 

 She had given him, instead, the delicate pleasure of watching her expand like a sea creature restored to its element, stretching out atrophied tentacles of girlish vanity and enjoyment to the rising tide of opportunity. ~ from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton

 A cynic is a passionate person who doesn’t want to be disappointed again ~ Benjamin Zander

 Care to our coffin adds a nail no doubt; and every grin, so merry, draws one out. ~John Wolcott

 Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.  ~from Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

 Finally, the Post-it note from my mother that reads… I love you! Mom