Romanticize 8: Quote Unquote
Your favorite creatives hold the key.
There are days when I need advice in the form of inspiration; when I’m seeking answers to questions I’m not even sure how to ask. This is when I turn to my bookshelves and internet browser for writing, interviews, and quotes from my favorite creatives. It’s amazing how much the musings of folks you admire can lift the spirit and motivate. So, for today’s Romanticize, let’s dig in and let those we esteem guide us!
The Romanticize
Compile inspirational sayings from your favorite creative(s).
The Advice
The sky’s the limit when it comes to whose quotes you seek—philanthropists, artists, actors, writers, politicians, entrepreneurs, wellness gurus, etc. If you’re having trouble thinking of someone to start your search with, look to two places: your current stash of books (if you’ve kept someone’s work—either fiction or nonfiction—on your shelf, you clearly find value in it), and online searches (enter phrases like “inspirational quotes” or “quotes about [SUBJECT]”).
If you feel called to do so, copy some of your favorite sayings into your journal or a notebook, or even just take a photo and save them in a folder on your phone so you can look back at them when needed.
The Inspiration
Today is my beloved L.M. (aka: Lucy Maud) Montgomery’s birthday! She was born 148 years ago, in 1874, but her words and wisdom remain as relevant as ever. In her honor, she’ll be my focus for this exercise. I have an entire level on my bookshelf devoted to her work, so there’s plenty for me to dig into.
I first turned to her memoir The Alpine Path—the title refers to the steep climb required for her to find success as an author. She uses this phrase in Emily of New Moon, to describe her heroine’s dream of ascending to a writing career. It’s such a deeply romantic way of framing a struggle that, I know all too well, is anything but. Flipping through the book today, I found that these two quotes resonated especially deeply with me at this very moment, as I’m reworking and re-querying my first novel after many rejections:
“At first I used to feel dreadfully hurt when a story or poem over which I had laboured and agonized came back, with one of those icy little rejection slips … But after a while I got hardened to it and did not mind. I only set my teeth and said, ‘I will succeed.’”
“I believe in myself and I struggled on alone, in secrecy and silence. I never told my ambitions and efforts and failures to any one. Down, deep down, under all discouragements and rebuff I knew I would ‘arrive’ some day.”
Aside from the whole “not telling anyone” thing (hi, Instagram friends!), this may as well be a page from my own journal. I often hearten myself remembering that Montgomery’s most famous work, Anne of Green Gables, was rejected by every publisher she sent it to in 1905. She put it in a hat box under her bed for two years before returning to it and trying again. How lucky we all are that she persevered!
It’s near impossible to choose my favorite quotes from her fiction books, but this, from Anne of Green Gables, tends to be the one I conjure most:
“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”
A close second is this from Emily of New Moon (my favorite series of Montgomery’s oeuvre):
“If it’s in you to climb, you must—there are those who must lift their eyes to the hills—they can’t breathe properly in the valleys.”
I also have Montgomery’s collected journals (all five volumes!) and thought it would be fun to look up an entry from her birthday. Here, from Volume 2, are her charming thoughts on Monday, November 30, 1914—the day she turned 40:
“I don’t feel any older today than yesterday—when I was only 39! Or the day before yesterday when I was—19! Thank God we don’t feel old. Life is much richer, fuller, happier, more comfortable for me now than it was when I was twenty. I have won the success I resolved to win twenty years ago. It is worth the struggle—but I would not wish to be twenty again with the struggle still before me. No, I am quite content to be forty—though it does sound so impossible.”
I think my favorite Montgomery fact is that, as a child, she had an imaginary friend who lived behind a bookcase in her grandparents’ house (she called it a “fairy room”…swoon!) She saw this friend’s reflection in the glass doors of the bookcase and named her Katie Maurice. Anne of Green Gables fans will know her as Anne’s window friend of the same name. I’ve always felt connected to Montgomery, and as a kid this detail made me feel that we were true kindred spirits.
I’d love to know the results of your romanticize—feel free to share your experience in the comments, or tag me on Instagram. Until next Wednesday, fellow romantics!