Language...

"A language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules, ... but an old growth forest of the mind." - Wade Davis

Movement...

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. - Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

Values...

This evening, Lisa, Lynne and I did several exercises on values. In the first exercise, we picked the 5 or 6 qualities that we value most in our friends. The second exercise: to pick the 3 or 4 qualities that would cause us to end a friendship, or to avoid a person altogether.

Our choices were surprisingly similar, but Lisa and Lynne and I are very alike in personality. What attributes would you pick?

Then we had alist of some 400 attributes and the challenge was to pick what was most important to us in our lives - either things we already have and value, or things we aspire to. ( Here are my 21 choices... )

Forgetfulness...

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. - Maya Angelou

It was not a dark and stormy night...

I am fascinated by the first lines of novels. Here is someone's list of the best one hundred.

I recognize rather a lot of them, even when I haven't read the books, because I read lists like these. Most of these lists are horrendously literary.

I love the first lines of Dick Francis novels. I love some of Dorothy Dunnett's first lines, particularly from The Disorderly Knights:

On the day that his grannie was killed by the English, Sir William Scott the Younger of Buccleuch was at Melrose Abbey, marrying his aunt.

Other favourites:

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham: "When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city - which was strange, because it began before I even knew what a city was."

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault: "Lest anyone should suppose I am a son of a nobody, sold off by some peasant father in a drought year, I may say our line is an old one, though it ends with me."

The Long Good-bye by Raymond Chandler: "The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox, he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open because Terry Lennox's left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one."

Some lines have amazing resonance for me, not in themselves, but because I so love the books they begin. "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day," or "In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark Bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in."

Trying to think of more...