Quodophiles, One and All

Apparently, I am what is called a quodophile - although I would not recommend that you waste your time looking for the word in any dictionary because you won't be finding it there. And, I’m betting that just about every other book blogger is probably a quodophile, too, because the word simply means that you are a collector of quotes. In our case, that would most often be quotes from authors or books that we read. I’m not sure if writing the quotes down in a little notebook or storing your collection somewhere in the cloud is required for quodophile qualification, but I suspect that it probably is. (Note to self: the only reason your Word dictionary does not flag “quodophile” is that you’ve added it to the dictionary yourself.)

 

Here, for example, are a few favorites I’ve logged in the last few months:

"Words. He might as well have picked them at random. They could have escaped from a thesauris in a poorly coordinated jailbreak, emerging into the light as absolute strangers, blinking at each other in total incomprehension." (Describing Poke Rafferty's attempt to write about the birth of his son)

"How often we made our worst fears come true by behaving as though they already were."

(Inspector Gamache's observation during a Three Pines murder investigation)

"Where was the religion for a man who believed that good and bad must coexist, even within the individual? Where was the religion for a man who believed in God, but not in God's religion?" (Inspector John Rebus reflecting on his relationship to God and to organized religion)

"It's 3:12 a.m., October 1, 2016. I have turned seventy. Daylight will bring slices of cake and cheerful goodwill. It will be like celebrating a hernia."

(Tim O'Brien's thoughts upon concluding his seventh decade on the planet)

"Every book in every bookstore is a fresh beginning. Every book is the next iteration of a very old story. Every bookstore, therefore, is like a safe-deposit box for civilization."

Two quotes from this one: "Death is the price we pay for life." And, "Real aging starts when your oldest child is fifty. You are in your seventies, you call your children 'kids,' and realize how young you were in your fifties."

Not all of the quotes are the most pleasant thoughts to contemplate...but each of them will make you think.