Favorite Lines

There's an educational author I adore who has shared an inspirational cache of lesson ideas with teachers like me who want our students to latch on to the written word and find themselves pulled into pieces of writing and then pushed into sharing their thoughts and emotions with others through their own pencil scratchings on a crinkled piece of loose leaf paper.

The original idea is to take note of the FIRST LINE of an author's piece of writing. I've revised this to include any line that draws you in, makes you taste, causes a sharp intake of breath. Anything that causes a physical reaction has got to be remembered, discussed, reviewed, and, sometimes, revered.

I oftentimes find myself taken with the musical quality a finely-sharpened pencil has when it moves across a single sheet of paper on a desktop. Likewise, I have to have a pen that will easily glide across paper. If I don't have the writing instrument of my choice, my words become stilted and harsh. I'm at my best when I have a keyboard creating a staccato of clickety-clacks as my thoughts appear on a monitor.

With that said, I need to share a few of my favorite lines, gleaned from books I will read again and again. Take a moment to delve into these wonders. Then, clickety-clack a few keystrokes and share something in the comments.

From Adriana Trigiani:

• Aunt Alice has a small head and thin lips. (That's a terrible combination.)
• That girl is not built for heaving lifting.
• He looks like a desert sheik from the movies, but he sounds like the rest of us.

From Frances Mayes:

• I am about to buy a house in a foreign country...a previous scarlet paint job seeps through in rosy spots like a box of crayons left to melt in the sun.

From Wally Lamb:

• On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.

Want to chuckle? Sometimes belly laugh? Grab a Trigiani book. Just trust me on this. The Big Stone Gap series made me snort out loud and shake with uncontrollable laughter. The southern idiosyncrasies, the accents, the subtle nuances of a small town - all of them were at once foreign and familiar since I'm a NY transplant now in southwestern Virginia.

Need to understand why people make choices? What brings them to a crossroads? Mayes' Under a Tuscan Sun could be the one to take you there. The book is so much more than the movie. Isn't that always the way?

Love going on a psychological journey through generations while being privy to knowledge, insight, and more aha moments than should be legal? Lamb's the one for you. I refer to I Know This Much Is True as my bible of sorts. Lamb is able to deftly weave a piece of family cloth with nubs and knots that your mind's eye repeatedly revisit while reading. I read and reread this one at a very difficult time in my life - questioning my history, future, present. The whole bunch of me. How I related to others. Dominick, Thomas' brother, became my twin in a sense because we both have such an art of survival. Yet this survival instinct oftentimes carved pieces of ourselves with such a cost.