An Uncommonplace Book

              I have always been a collector. As a child, I collected rocks, then bottlecaps (which collection was meager and short-lived), and then dice of various sizes and colours. I think that this stemmed more from a desire to possess defining characteristics than from a real interest in any of the items concerned. I recall one endeavour in which I attempted to keep up a book of hubcaps- when I saw a car passing by, I would examine its hubcaps and draw a quick sketch of it in my notebook. I don't really know what possessed me to do this; I got bored with it after a day.
             I haven't collected anything like rocks or bottlecaps or hubcaps in many years. It has ceased to interest me. However, I still have the impulses of a collector. I think that I've always looked at life itself as a process of collecting. Doing new and exciting things means collecting experiences. Reading means collecting ideas or information. Meeting new people means collecting personalities, listening to music means collecting bands and artists, and so on and so forth. I collect things this way because I want things to love. Every new thing I encounter in life, I evaluate as something to be loved or forgotten, and if it is to be loved (which it nearly always is) then it gets folded neatly somewhere in my mind, to be thought over fondly someday.
            The practice of collecting various things manifested itself long ago in Commonplace books. First invented in Italy, they were meant as a way for individuals to collect information, ideas, quotes-- anything they might find useful. In the 17th Century, this practice of collecting scraps of existence was part of an Oxford education.
            (If you would like to know more about Commonplace books, I got my information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book).
            The idea of losing something frightens me. I am always afraid that I will forget something beautiful that I have happened upon. That is why I decided some time ago that I would keep a book of  favourite passages from the books I read. That way, when I find some articulated idea which is particularly breathtaking, I can store it away to be reviewed when I like. I've begun several quote-books, in note-books already containing other things, and also in my phone. I have never had a note-book whose sole purpose was to gather quotes in-- that is, until now. The other day I happened upon a very pretty address-book my mother gave to me a while ago (buried under clutter on the floor), and I thought I would devote it to this higher purpose. Since I have a shaky knowledge, at best, of the requirements of a Commonplace book, I decided that I would title my new quote-book the Uncommonplace book.
          Here are a few quotes that I've gathered so far; not all of them have been added into the Uncommonplace Book just yet:
   
          "Routine comes down like twilight on a harsh landscape, softening it until it is tolerable."                                                                                   -F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and Damned.

          "Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building."
                                                                            -F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and Damned.
 
        
          "There is a world that poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world that everyone else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world."
                                                                           -Mary Ruefle. Madness, Rack, and Honey.


           "Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost."
                                                                           -Ayn Rand. The Fountainhead.


           "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."
                                                                         -Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

           "What a mournful moment is that in which society withdraws itself and gives up a thinking being forever."
                                                                            -Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.