If you wanna kiss the sky...

I love quotes. For years, my favorite quote was "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that in me there lay invincible summer," from Albert Camus. That resonates with me on so many levels. I live in Minnesota, so I spend a hell of a lot of time in the depth of winter. But summer always returns - and what invincible summers we have! More philosophically, as someone who's prone to...well...melancholy, it's good to know that the internal summer is there, somewhere, waiting and willing to come out. I've been trying to nurture the internal summer lately, with varying degrees of success. But it is invincible. My internal summer will always vanquish the winter in the long run.

"Stories and cigarettes ruin lives of lesser girls" - Pete Yorn, in the song "Strange Condition." I have no idea why I like this line so much. Maybe because Pete Yorn is hot and I totally want to have his children. Maybe because the song it comes from is so sexy. I have no idea. No philosophy on this one; I just like it.

"All we really need to be happy is something to be enthusiastic about" - Charles Kingsley. This is one I can really get behind. Look at the happy people you know (OK, maybe just the people who are in a good mood), and they have at least one thing in common: they're excited about something. I think I need to find a subject for enthusiasm before the work week starts again. (Wish me luck.)

"If you wanna kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel" - U2, from "She Moves in Mysterious Ways." This is another one that sticks with me on lots of levels. It reminds me to start with baby steps; that life is really, really big; that it's important to have gratitude. Plus, the song just makes me want to get up and dance.

"You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think" - Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh.  This affirmation makes me smile on the inside. It's the kind of thing I'd like to paste on my bathroom mirror so I could look at it every single day, except I know someone would come over and think I was some kind of weirdo for having that on my bathroom mirror. Really. So in my head it stays.

Words are fascinating to me. The words one chooses (or doesn't choose) to make a statement can be almost as meaningful as the statement itself.  I don't know if anything I say (or write) will ever be quoted as philosophy for the ages, but think about it for a minute: how cool is it that we have all these words in the English language? And that the words can be combined in an infinite number of ways to say an infinite number of things about an infinte number of thoughts?

Think about your favorite quote, or song lyric, or poem, or whatever. Would it say the same thing if even one of the words were different? I think one of the reasons I like these quotes so much is because I can't imagine them with other words. They seem so perfect the way they are.

I think I'm going to enjoy this blogging thing...