"I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
Mark Twain

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
Oscar Wilde

"This is called teamwork. I furnish the brains. You furnish the muscles, the aches and the pains". Dr Seuss in "I had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew"

And from "Hogfather"

"Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They’re not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become? "  Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett just has too many to list here.  The man is brilliant.

Since my earliest teen years (too long ago to admit), I have loved Robert Frost’s "The Road Not Taken".  My life has been filled with adventures and I don’t know if it is due to the inspiration of this poem, or if I was drawn to the poem, because that was my nature…to take the road not taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

And the part that speaks to me the most is:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost…from The Road Less Traveled…"two forks diverged in a wood and I, I chose the one less traveled, and that has made all the difference."   How true.

I’ve always been a voracious reader.  When I was a teenager I would write down quotes that I liked, few of which I recall.  But one in particular resonated with me and I have never forgotten it, though I don’t know the author.

"I will has a spirit that nothing daunts.  Once it gets it’s eyes on the thing it wants.  It rolls up it’s sleeves and pitches in, with a splendid zeal that is bound to win."

I’ve definitely taken that attitude into the workplace.  Someone has to take the lead, quit talking about it and GET IT DONE!!

28 years this month for our Book Club, I come back to my favorite book- "Love in the time of Cholera" by Marquez

"He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."

"She discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them."

"Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore."

This quote from Marilyn Robinson’s "Housekeeping"  stays with me :

"Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting"

In 3rd grade I read a book, can’t remember the name of the book, however I have never forgot the following line:

"I would If I could, but I can’t cause I won’t".

I can’t tell you how this has helped me in my life, I have passed this on to my children & grand children along with many others. Many of us  have had very traumatic experiences in ouu lives. I refuse to let those terrible times run my life. Life is to short to let the past haunt you. if you don’t get over it you’ll trip over it. Just my two cents…….. :-)

Janice Green