So, next year, my family is hosting a family reunion in the Old Dominion. Part of the reunion includes the gathering and publishing of a written, family history. Each daughter (there are four) and their children (there are 16 of us) and their grandchildren (there are 23 of those) are to submit a personal, written history from the time they were born until the present day. All of these will be gathered together and compiled in a book that will eventually find its way into each of our homes and into the collection at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.Frankly, I don't care for projects like this, but I'm doing it because I love my mom and she asked me to participate.
I want to write my history using lines from literature and great authors. I've got a few bits from Dickens, Melville, and Shakespeare I think I can weave into fun, light-hearted prose as part of my written history. But... I need help.
Here's where you come in, oh great, learned, and well-read readers. Please supply a line, the author, and the text.
To get us--and my history started--I am using this:
"I record that I was born (as I have been informed and I believe)"(1) on May the 14th in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight. The hospital in which I entered this world no longer exists and is, today, a 7-11 on the corner of Tennessee Street in the former naval port of Vallejo, Solano County, California....
1. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Any great literary or movie lines are welcome! Thank you for your creative genius and your time!
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16 comments:
"I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts. I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue." - Oscar Wilde
And from the same author: "I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood."
Those should keep your family chatting behind your back for a while.
Gilahi: Oh, you have NO idea. Particularly where that first quote is concerned! LOL! Excellent quotes both. Thank you!
Hmm...
"I'm Batman!" ?
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." --Dickens seems to apply to everybody.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid."
~Epictetus (Also quoted in the movie "Serendipity")
Oh! And you CANNOT forget this one...
"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."
~Robert Frost
"Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now."
~The Jerk
Ah... Phx Tch already got The Jerk reference I was thinking of. But you could also include, "I was born the son of poor black sharecroppers."
OK - you gotta start with "Call me Ahab." if you haven't got that one already.
- Moby Dick
Here are some the KoH and I came up with:
"I am mad but North, Northwest. When the wind is Southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw."
- Hamlet
"Men fight when they should run. And fools fight when they should run. But I didn't need to say it twice."
- Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time
"Belgarath the Sorcerer was none too fond of physical labor and perhaps a bit too fond of dark brown ale. He had a rather grand indifference to some of the finer points of property ownership."
- David Eddings, Belgarath the Sorcerer
"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."
- Frederich Nietzche
"It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener."
- Ayn Rand, The Atlas Shrugged
I could do this all night....
Oh, these are all good! Now I just have to draft an outline and figure out how to fit them in my history.
I obviously need to add The Jerk to my Netflix queue. It's been at least 20 years since I last saw it and I can't remember any of it.
Hey, NG, if you and the KOH want to keep going with this, I'd love more! (And speaking of you and the KOH, it was great to see you on Saturday and meet him and see the girls. You guys are one cute, cool family!)
This is the best I could do after a long day.....vareid but they all feel like they may work for you...
“It was the best of time, it was the worst of times.” Dickens
“Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.” Brendan Gill
“I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty...This is my highest and best use as a human.” Ben Stein
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.” Isaac Asimov
*varied* (the harder the day, the lousier the typing)
At the risk of seeming pedantic, isn't the "Moby Dick" opening line actually "Call me Ishmael"? There may be a "Call me Ahab" line in there too. God knows that book is easy to forget.
@Gilahi: You're absolutely right. Chalk it up to sleep deprivation and too much cough medicine.
Ishmael. Ahab. Melville. Dick. Whatever! I'll be using that quote in my history.
Perhaps I'll write it this way: Call me Janet. Janet from another planet. Dammit.
God bless Lily St. Cyr.
Oooo sounds like we need a Rocky Horror Picture reference.
"Dammit, Janet, I love you." - Brad
And then there is Rhett Butler who said, "Frankly, M'dear, I don't give a damn."
I do give a damn so I will try to play a long after a bit of thought on all this. You need some Gilbran and Austin.
Okay I just stole this from Mir's blog at shoulda woulda
I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.
— Mother Teresa
"Into every life, a little rain must fall."
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