“I sent a message to the fish:
I told them ‘This is what I wish.’

The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.

The little fishes’ answer was
‘We cannot do it, Sir, because –‘

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ said Alice.
‘It gets easier further on,’ Humpty Dumpty replied.

‘I sent to them again to say
‘It will be better to obey.’

The fishes answered, with a grin,
‘Why, what a temper you are in!’

I told them once, I told them twice:
They would not listen to advice.

I took a kettle large and new,
Fit for the deed I had to do.

My heart went hop, my heart went thump:
I filled the kettle at the pump.

Then some one came to me and said
‘The little fishes are in bed.’

I said to him, I said it plain,
‘Then you must wake them up again.’

I said it very loud and clear:
I went and shouted in his ear.’

Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a scream as he repeated this verse, and Alice thought with a shudder, `I wouldn’t have been the messenger for anything!’

‘But he was very stiff and proud:
He said, ‘You needn’t shout so loud!’

And he was very proud and stiff:
He said ‘I’d go and wake them, if — ‘

I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked .

And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but –‘

There was a long pause.

`Is that all?’ Alice timidly asked.

`That’s all,’ said Humpty Dumpty. `Good-bye.'”

— “Through the Looking Glass,” by Lewis Carroll

“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”

–Alice May Brock, author (1941-)

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”

— Cesar Chavez, Mexican-American labor activist and leader of the United Farm Workers

“The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

–John Milton (1608-1674) [Paradise Lost]

Quote any of these and everyone will think you’re a little smarty!

Have fun reading!

love,

WM

(I found these on Litline)

100 Best First Lines from Novels

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) (more…)

“It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses. Hit it.”

— The Blues Brothers
(Titania was in a “blue” mood)

I would love to leave this messy, half-packed house behind for a week and hit the road with my husband and the kids. Would love that. Maybe the carpet guys will come over and move all the furniture for us and we can go? (We’re getting new carpet this weekend! Not for us — for whoever we sell the place to. So they can say, “Jeez-US! This carpet is ugly — who would pick this color?” It’s kind of a taupe, kinda wheat color? Neutral but not boring.) Then they will spend much $$$ tearing out carpet and putting in laminates. Or hardwoods, if they have that kind of cash. Or maybe under the plywood upstairs they will find… oak!

(They can dream, can’t they?)

Even more than the carpet situation, the carpet situation which is going to consume our entire weekend and on into next week, this fantasy hinges on us having enough cash to do what we want, where we want, without having to worry about work, vacation time, depleted PTO, kids who are in school. And you my dear, beloved readers, would say something like “Girl disappeared! Huh. She’ll be back later…” so I wouldn’t have Blog Guilt. (Those of you who blog, do you have guilt for not updating? I do, sometimes.)

Top Picks if We Were to Pack Up and Go Right This Minute:

* Disneyland!
* Vancouver, B.C.
* to see the grandparents, first in Denver, Colo., then in Iowa City, Ia.
* MEMPHIS!
* New. York. City!
* Kelowna, B.C., sez Hockey God

Thelma: “Are you sure we should be driving like this, I mean in broad daylight and everything?”

— from the film “Thelma and Louise”

“Nothing is really so very frightening when everything is so very dangerous.”

— Gertrude Stein

From Saturday Night Live, circa 1976:

Madeline: “So then the man gets bare naked in bed with you and you both go to sleep, which is why they call it “sleeping together.” Then you both wake up and the man says, “Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable?” No, wait a second, um, no, I think that comes, uh, before. Anyways, it’s not important, it’s not important.”