TRUE COLORS

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person... In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression... The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.
John Boorman, film director
quoted on the opening page of
True Colors
by Kristin Hannah

I've just started reading this book, but this opening page knocked me out.

THE MELTING SEASON

I was on the edge of something dire. All it took was a little push. That was when I realized what needed to happen. I can take it all and no one can stop me. And there was nothing left to do afterward but get the hell out of town.
Jami Attenburg
The Melting Season

THE FEAST OF LOVE

Every relationship has at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day. That day is always in your possession. That's the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day. It happened once. You think all the vairables might just line up again. But they don't. Not always. I once talked to a woman who said, "Yeah, that's the day we had an angel around."
(Chapter Two first paragraph)
The Feast of Love
Charles Baxter

JULIET, NAKED

They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet. The simple truth of this only struck Annie when they were actually inside it: apart from the graffiti on the walls, some of which made some kind of reference to the toilet's importance in musical history, it was dank, dark, smelly and entirely unremarkable. Americans were very good at making the most of their heritage, but there wasn't much even they could do here.
Juliet Naked
Nick Hornby

And, another line I particularly like...

It had taken her about a minute and a hlaf to work out that, if Duncan every looked at the fridge, he would have not idea who he was staring at, and the ironies of that were good enough and large enough to eat with a knife and fork, on their own, with no accompanying bitterness.

A MILLION MILES IN A THOUSAND YEARS

donaldmilleris.com

The saddest thing about life is you don't remember half of it. You don't even remember half of half of it. Not even a tiny percentage, if you want to know the truth. I have this friend Bob who writes down everything he remembers. If he remembers dropping an ice cream cone on his lap when he was seven, he'll write it down. The last time I talked to Bob, he had written more than five hundred pages of memories. He's the only guy I know who remembers his life. He said he captures memories, because if he forgets them, it's a though they didn't happen; it's as though he hadn't lived the parts he doesn't remember.

Donald Miller

And...

Writing a story isn't about making your peaceful fantasies come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn't think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it's conflict that changes a person.

LIKE FAMILY: Growing Up in Other People's Houses

Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in. Sometimes they need to smell your hands, your shoes, between your legs. Sometimes they just throw themselves full tilt, all of them at all of you--like the Lindbergh's dogs. They were what we saw first, a happy blur along the fencing as our social worker, Mrs. O'Rourke. slowed the car and stopped in front of the whitewashed wooden gate.
Like Family
Paula McLain

BLUE LIKE JAZZ

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Baghdad Theatre one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes and he never opened his eyes.


After that I liked jazz music.


Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.


I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened.
Donald Miller
[not a first paragraph, but one of Miller's choices]