I launched my website last night. My husband and I had a private launch party at IHOP this morning. Last year I had hinted that I wanted to have a website and he gave me a domain name for Christmas and then introduced me to a talented website developer. I told her I wanted a quotation field, and yesterday, as I began to add content to my site I also began to add my favorite quotations. The first source I turned to was my “Quote Box,” a small metal box filled with 3×5 index cards of quotations I collected in high school and through college.
I had filed them meticulously, with bibliographic references on the back of each card and the date I added it to the box. As I sorted through the cards I was able to chronicle my eras of idealism, my period of interest in Chinese poetry, the influential class I took on Philosophy of Science at Bryn Mawr College. I could see my handwriting deteriorate from its former neat printing or cursive writing. Some quotes were even typed on an old manual typewriter. Although I still love quotations, I wish I had maintained the habit of collecting them. What would have been the quotations for the thirty years since I stopped adding to my box until I started searching for quotations with renewed vigor yesterday? I fear that the deterioration of my handwriting paralleled the change from the idealism of my youth to the too often cynicism of my adulthood. One of the quotations I stumbled upon yesterday was from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.” I am hoping that as I approach fifty-five I can climb again, not the hill of my youth, but a different hill of hope and optimism that I have forgotten for too long.
2 Responses to “My Quote Box”
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by Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club
I love your website and your blog – it’s beautiful!
Hi Cheryl!
Great site!
I don’t think you need to worry about taking refuge in a cave! I hadn’t heard that quote by Fitzgerald. My fav. one of his is when he flunked something in English at Princeton & said Sir, you can’t give me an F -I’m going to be a writer! Or maybe he made that up after he became one.