Monday Quotes #1

I’ve always loved quotes. There is something about them… they are right down to the point, pure wisdom, clear observations, hilarious humor…Though, I never had a memory for them for some reason. I could always remember that someone said something great about something, but I could never remember who that was or how precisely it was said.

When I was younger, I used to have a notebook where I was writing quotes, so I would not forget them and I enjoyed taking that notebook and rereading quotes occasionally. I probably still have it somewhere, just need to dig it out. It should have some great quotes.

Therefore, I decided to start this Monday quotes thing - I will post each Monday a quote that I like and try to explain what is it in that quote that clicking me. I don’t know for how long I’m going to do that. I don’t know if I get bored in a couple of weeks and give it up, but for now… here is my first quote.

"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar."

— Cornelia Funke (Inkspell)

This is one of my favorite quotes, because it is so undeniably true, at least for me.

I don’t like rereading books, because I usually remember them too well (and I mean it, I remember them down to every word) and also because I could never get the same impression second time as I did when I first read them.

However, I like taking a book I’ve read of the shelf, just flip through the pages and remember… but not the book itself, rather where I was when I first read it, how I felt, even what season and weather was at that time. Everything comes rushing to me.

Not only the words in the book help, but also the smell. Oh, I love smells, they are probably the best memory trigger for me. Maybe that’s why I don’t like lending my books to anyone, so the book would only smell with my perfume I was wearing while reading it, with the food that I ate, with the place where I read it. Yes, I’m very greedy when it comes to the books.