Quotations go well with our lives today. They tend to be short enough to repeat easily, to tweet, to use as a prompt or starting point. The other day, I wrote about "The Truth About Writing", a collection of quotes published by Abrams books. I wondered who compiled the quotes but the publisher's agent said that the person who compiled the collection no longer worked for them and she wasn't clear if she should give out the name.
A while back, I read Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind" and one of his chapters is about design. Pink wrote that competition for entrance to design school is on a par with competition for a place in medical school. As a person interested in what programmed and programmable devices can do for me, I am interested in design, especially computer and device interface design. Often, modern communications give credit to Apple Computing for the design of the iPod, iPad, Mac and iPhone as being of such fine design as to conquer the world and set the stage for many competing products, too. So, when I bought The Truth About Writing, I also bought "The Designer Says", quotations from designers, compiled by Sara Bader and published by Princeton Architecture Press.
Quite a bit of Designer is about graphic design and page and typographic design, which doesn't interest me much. However, the layout, the page numbers (none, none! in Truth), the index of quoted people make the Designer says a much better product in this customer's opinion. I wrote to Abrams books asking for a file on quoted people with the intent of at least alphabetizing the names so I would learn more about them, one by one. The publisher's agent asked,"What are you going to DO with the file?" Probably nothing since I doubt I will ever get it.
One of the first books I ever bought was a collection of quotations. I bought it at about age 10 or 12 in the drugstore down the street from my grandparents' house on Virginia Ave. Since Sara Bader, compiler of designer quotes and remarks was openly listed and her collection is so much more valuable for further use, I looked her up. Turns out she created "Quotenik.com", which is a pleasure to visit. At least today the site features this quote from E.B.White, longtime essayist for the New Yorker, author of Charlotte's Web and a writer's writer:
"I soon realized I had made no mistake in my choice of a wife. I was helping her pack an overnight bag one afternoon when she said, 'Put in some tooth twine.' I knew then that a girl who called dental floss tooth twine was the girl for me. It had been a long search, but it was worth it."
The site has a large and growing collection of valuable and stimulating quotes.
Quotes fit into our modern hurry and impatience and the right ones often say more than several volumes. I looked up "quotations" in Amazon Books and Amazon Kindle store and there are tons of fine volumes, including free ones.
