Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. Image Credit: Pexels
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You
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There ain’t no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.
Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie
Because of Winn-Dixie is one of my favorite books of all time, and I recently rewatched the movie with my parents. My mom had been wanting to rewatch it for some time, and it was so nice to revisit it. I also have to say that it didn’t hit me the first dozen times watching it that it has one of the most stacked casts of any non-Oscar baity movie I’ve ever seen. Eva Marie Saint? Cicely Tyson? Jeff Daniels? Dave Matthews? And that’s not even including two of the younger cast members, AnnaSophia Robb and Elle Fanning. If you’ve never seen the movie or read the book, there’s no better time than right now.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. Image Credit: Lenalensen
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc.
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How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. Image Credit: aitoff
Something that a lot of people don’t want to talk about is what a luxury saying “no” is. As long as we’re living in a capitalist society that forces us to exchange our minds, bodies, souls, and time for money in order to live and pay for basic necessities, then saying “no” will always be a luxury for people that are living paycheck to paycheck.
Now, that aside, whenever I’m able to do so, I love saying “no”. Do I want to go out and spend my valuable time with people I don’t like? “No.” Do I want to engage with people whose sole purpose is to steal my energy and my time? “No.” Do I choose to have people in my life who don’t treat me the way I treat them? “No.”
Do I want to go out and spend my valuable time with people I don’t like? “No.” Do I want to engage with people whose sole purpose is to steal my energy and my time? “No.” Do I choose to have people in my life who don’t treat me the way I treat them? “No.”
Say “no” when you can, and say it as often as possible. The older I get, and I’m inching closer and closer to 30, the more I realize how precious our time on this planet is. The days sometimes seem endless but the years fly past like dandelion seeds on the wind. Here and then gone, in the blink of an eye. The people you love grow old, and then die. You go from being young and healthy (if you’re lucky) to telling a complete stranger in Walgreens about your eczema (true story).
You go from being young and healthy (if you’re lucky) to telling a complete stranger in Walgreens about your eczema (true story).
Yeah, we have to do a lot of crappy things to stay alive. You have to eat and swallow 💩 from your boss who you hate and smile and simper at coworkers you’d sooner push down a ravine. You have to feed the machine. But when the machine is done with you, and you’re lucky enough to have anything left, then what you do with the rest is up to you. It’s my goal and purpose moving forward to only spend my time in ways that bring me joy and enrich my life, and enjoy as many precious moments with my loved ones as I can. I wish the same for you.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. Image Credit: nickpanek620
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid activist and first president of South Africa from 1994-1999
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Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. Image Credit: Aurélien-Barre
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
I need to make a confession: I lied to one of my high school teachers about reading Les Misérables all the way through about twelve years ago and it’s haunted me ever since. I’m going to get through it this year, I swear.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Free for use under the Pixabay Content License. Image Credit: Marco-willy
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
For the past few years, I’ve really considered getting a tattoo of a mockingjay from The Hunger Games, as it’s my favorite book series of all time. I reread it several times a year on audiobook and I never get tired of it. The only thing that’s kept me from it is my mother’s wrath. I might be 28 years old, but I still think she’d spank my behind if I got a tattoo. And, to be quite frank, I’m alright without having any. If getting tatted is anything like shopping in terms of the dopamine reward, I’d probably take it way too far.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Free for use under the Pixabay Content license. Image credit: JillWellington
Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?
from “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, in her poetry collection Dream Work
“Wild Geese” was one of the first poems by Mary Oliver that I ever encountered, and I’ve been a disciple of hers ever since. She exists in my mind among the world’s greatest writers, living or dead (she passed away in 2019). I carry the words of “Wild Geese” always in my heart, as an urgent reminder of not just my mortality but my own unique aliveness. There are things we are all given to do, and if one is really lucky (my mother hates the word lucky, so for her I will leave the word blessed here), they’re allowed to share what they’ve been given to others. This is the sole purpose and the grand design of all artistic creation.
There are things we are all given to do, and if one is really lucky (my mother hates the word lucky, so for her I will leave the word blessed here), they’re allowed to share what they’ve been given to others. This is the sole purpose and the grand design of all artistic creation.
I just realized the poem I pulled today’s quote from talks about geese and the picture I’ve provided is of a tit. I think I’ll let it stand.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Free for use under the Pixabay Content license. Image credit: Mollyroselee
What is your favorite type of weather?
I don’t care that I’m in the minority. Give me chilly winds and icy skies. Give me naked trees reaching their gnarled limbs in every direction. Give me the nostalgia of snow days and canceled classes, empty hours with nothing of import to fill them with. Those were simpler times. Maybe it’s because I associate winter with my childhood, and staying home and watching movies with my mom without the encumbrance of a “non-traditional instruction day” (really, tell me something technology hasn’t destroyed).
Summer is not my jam anyway. Too hot, especially in the South. Good God, you can’t take your clothes off fast enough in air so hot and sticky just breathing is an insurmountable chore. I mean, it has its perks, especially when you’re a kid. Summer vacation, no school, you know the drill. Swimming and traveling and running in the grass under the hot sun until your pants and shirt are stained with chlorophyll and your skin is pink with sunburn (or in my delicate case, sun poisoning).
Free for use under the Pixabay Content license. Image credit: DominikRh
Swimming and traveling and running in the grass under the hot sun until your pants and shirt are stained with chlorophyll and your skin is pink with sunburn (or in my delicate case, sun poisoning).
Added is the fact that summer is bittersweet because you know it will never last. The days will grow shorter and colder. The leaves will turn and you’ll return to school and the hustle and bustle of life. Winter Is Coming, indeed.
But in winter, there is always hope. Hope that you can’t find in summer, which is this…spring is on its way.
Free for use under the Pixabay Content license. Image credit: jplenio
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
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