#23

Elizabeth Berg's True to Form is book #23.  This the third book about Katie (and the one that started my quest to read the first two).  I'm sure that some people think Berg's style is too sappy ~ but I love it.  It is rich in the images that have been true to my life.  Here teenage Katie is learning who she is and how to be who she wants to be.  So many characters come to life and point to things she values in her own life. 

I have quite a collection of good quotes:

• This one just made me smile ~ to have your whole being reduced to one sentence: "She was a housewife who made good gravy and kept a parakeet in her kitchen." (p2) and have that sentence speak so much!
• Why I wish I could be a writer ~ (p63) I take in a huge breath and look at the sky as hard as I can.  I feel like I'm trying to eat it with my eyes.  I wish there would be certain things you come across and you could say, Okay, that's one.  Put that away for me to pull out later just exactly as it is now.  My dream is for me to be a poet who could make things like this sky come to life for someone else.  If you see a sunset and try and describe it to someone in normal words, all you can say is, "Boy, I saw a great sunset last night."  But if you are a poet, you give it to someone to feel for themselves.  Like you make a little seed of what you saw, they swallow it, and it blooms again inside their own heart.
• If we could live our lives remembering this ~ (p72) One thing I know: Anything we have, we are only borrowing.  Anything.  Any time.
• (p130)  This is why I'm crying, the distance from what you feel to what you say, how it will always be like that.  ~ This is EXACTLY how I feel when I want to tell someone thank you.  Can words ever express what we truly FEEL?
• The gardener in my soul knows this ~ (p167) Sometimes when you've been outside and gotten dirt on your hands, it just feels so friendly and connected.
• (p210) Next to me was a woman who could not carry a tune.  At first I was so annoyed, listening to her.  I wondered, Why does she sing so loud when she doesn't even know how?  Then I looked at her and she was so pure, staring straight ahead, her face lit from within.  Something moved into my heart at that moment that I did not really understand, but I understand it now: It is never about how good your voice is; it is only about feeling the urge to sing, and then having the courage to do it with the voice you are given.  It is about what people try to share with each other, even if so many of us are so off-key when we do it.  It is about saying we are somewhere, when what we mean is we are as close as we are able to get.

fl: It is the first Sunday evening of the summer, the sky an ash rose color and losing its light to night.  ll: The leaves rustle violently, then settle back down into calm greenness, as though nothing has happened.  I think when I get home, I'll sit at my desk and find a way to make something of that.