Q is for Quiet, Quotations, and Qualtagh (Oh, my!)

The letter Q has far more to offer than I ever thought! Here are three Q words I love:


Quiet:

Photo by Maria Shemesh
Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

I crave quiet time. A few years ago, right about the time my second child was born, I started getting up before everyone else in the house, just so I could spend an hour or two alone. (Luckily, I've been blessed with children who started sleeping through the night at a young age.) I use this time away from everyone to read and write and just enjoy quiet moments of "me" time, with no one asking where the car keys are or demanding that I make pancakes for breakfast or find the missing Hello Kitty sock. I admit that some mornings I'm tired and it's all I can do to get out of bed at 5:30 or 6 a.m., but I know that if I don't have that time to myself, the rest of my day won't feel quite right. What helps on those eyes-won't-quite-open days? Coffee, of course!

What about you?  Do you crave time alone? How do you fit "me" time into your life?

Quotations:



Photo by Petr Kratochvil
Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

Ever since I was in college, I've been a quotation collector. I have a huge list now, and I sometimes refer to it when I need writing prompts or just a new perspective on my day. Following are a few of my favorites. Some are about writing and poetry, and others are about life. All of them, at least to me, are inspiring. (You can find these and other quotations at The Quote Garden.)

• This one gives me hope on days when following my writing dream seems hopeless: 

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." ~ Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist, poet, and short story writer

• And this one gives me the courage to push through, even when I feel like nothing I write will ever be good enough:

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the guts to do it and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." ~ Sylvia Plath, American poet, novelist, and short story writer

• There's something beautiful about this truth:

"Poetry is life distilled." ~ Gwendolyn Brooks, American poet

• And this one illustrates what I think is a fun truth:

"To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funny bone."  ~ Reba McEntire, American country music artist and actress

• And how could I leave out this life quotation from one of my favorite poems:

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." ~ T. S. Eliot, American-born poet, publisher, playwright, and critic, in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"


Do we share any of the same favorites? What quotations do you find inspiring?


Qualtagh:

I couldn't resist this word. It's a new one for me, one I discovered while I was searching online for all things Q. According to The Phrontistery, a qualtagh is "the first person encountered after leaving home on a special day." Other sources define it as  "the first individual a person meets after exiting his or her house."

Interesting, right? I never would have imagined a word existed for that!


My qualtagh today was a sales associate at Barnes & Noble. Who was yours?


See you tomorrow with the letter R!