Makes-Me-Smile Monday: the Thinkin’ Bloggers Carnival

I started hosting the MMSM carnival about a year ago, and then stopped six months ago when we moved across the country. I miss the interaction and the focused/directed writing of the carnival, though not the mindless terror of fearing that, this Monday, no one might participate.

I enjoy the Rocks in My Dryer WFMW carnival (which I shamelessly plundered for info on how to host mine), though sometimes it is overwhelming with how many links she gets. Other carnivals worth checking out include Tickle-Me Tuesday, Fight the Frump, and the Recipe Box Swap.

You can read past editions of the MMSM carnival here, though the Mr. Linkys are long gone as I have a minimalist account with them (and comments seem to be random too for some user error deep technological reason).

For this resurgence of the carnival, I’ve chosen some of my favorite quotes from books and movies as the “topics.” I really mean these as very broad starting points. You could write on anything that is sparked by thinking about the book or movie or by reading the quote or anything twice removed from that. And I would love to get your ideas for quotes or topics. Just email me at whataboutmom@gmail.com.

Click on the button to the left or the link in the header for more information, and here’s the tentative schedule. Hope to see you here next Monday!

March 31 from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way . . .

April 7 from Some Kind of Wonderful

Keith: You can’t judge a book by its cover.
Watts: No, but you can tell how much it’s gonna cost you.
Keith Nelson: Wow, I never knew you were so deep.
Watts: You want shallow, call Amanda Jones.

April 14 from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

April 21 from House

Dr. Cameron: Men should grow up.
Dr. Gregory House: Yeah. And dogs should stop licking themselves. It’s not gonna happen.
or
Dr. Wilson: Beauty often seduces us on the road to truth.
Dr. Gregory House: And triteness kicks us in the nads.

April 28 from Thoreau’s Walden

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.
or
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

May 5 from The Kingdom (very last lines)

Adam Leavitt: Fleury. Tell me what you whispered to Janet, in the briefing, to get her to stop crying about Fran, you know, before all this, before we even got airborne. What’d you say to her?
Aunt: Tell me, what did your grandfather whisper in your ear before he died?
Adam Leavitt: You remember?
Ronald Fleury: I told her we were gonna kill ‘em all.
15-Year-Old Granddaughter: Don’t fear them, my child. We are going to kill them all.