Search for quotations in writing that you can connect with – Press Enterprise

By Laurel Vermilyea Cortés | Contributing Columnist

It is rewarding to explore the quotes and sayings available to us in book compilations and online. We add them to our personal experience of advice and warnings from family and friends. We can — and should — also use them in our writing, directly or indirectly.

My midwestern mother used a lot of sayings. Notably, after school as we traipsed into the house — alone or in groups — we heard, “put everything in its ultimate place.” Understandable for a woman bringing up eight kids.

I have a few favorite quotations that I live by:

Albert Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Margaret Runbeck: “Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”

Mark Twain: “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

Following again the rule of three, I have a fondness for three unorthodox love quotes:

Moliere: “He who loves everyone loves no one.”

Johann von Goethe: “If I love you, what business is it of yours?”

Walt Disney: “I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I’ve ever known.”

During the pandemic I received a text from my granddaughter Melissa Riley that made my day. From their early childhood, I had always said to her and her sister Holly, “Fun’s more fun when the work is done.” Now a UC Riverside graduate, Mel worked as a nanny for two young children of a professional family. She modified my saying and told the young boys in her care, “Fun’s not fun until the work is done.” Days later, 5-year-old Ravi sighed, “I wish fun was fun with the work not done.” That might stay with him his whole life!

The girls’ mother, Cynthia, gave me two quotes in one week when she was 3 years old. We moved into a home on Randall Road overlooking Fairmount Park in Riverside. After climbing the 20 steps up to the house, she gasped, “My heart is sweating.” Two days later, as she was playing blocks on the living room floor I said, “Cinders, honey, keep that ugly old broom out of the walkway. Her reply: “It’s not ugly when you need it.”

Here’s a quote from the talented and outrageous actress Shelley Winters that reminds us to pack our warm and fuzzies when we visit Wimbledon next July. “I got so cold in London one summer I almost got married again.”

Marshall McLuhan gives us this to consider when naming a newborn: “The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.”

We all have stories about our names. In Canberra, Australia my husband Carlos and I were at an after-lecture cocktail party when one of the Aussie professors came to me and said, “I hear your name is Lauren. That’s a beautiful name.” “No, actually, it’s Laurel, I replied.” “BETTER!” was his imaginative retort.

A friend of Carlos’ called him and said, “I’m writing a book on Latinos at Stanford, and I found that the school’s very first Latino graduate was named Carlos Eliseo Cortés. Isn’t that your name?” “Yes. He’s my grandfather.”

As a student at Oceanside-Carlsbad Union High School, I played the bass clarinet in our marching band and in our symphony orchestra. I find this quote by World War I Prime Minister George Clemenceau priceless: “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.”

The idea is to search for a quotation, a proverb or a “saying” that you can relate to on a personal level. It may inspire a story, script, thesis or an article. “A Farewell to Arms,” “East of Eden” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” are among the renowned titles of novels that my generation read. They were biblical, Shakespearean, or based on well-known poetry but the authors carried something deeply from the title into the theme.