Lindsay Edmunds 2012

"I'm not wound anymore," he said.

"Well," said Frog, "I don't suppose anyone ever is completely self-winding. That's what friends are for."

- from The Mouse and His Child

Left in Peters Township Public Library, McMurray, PA, USA and also posted on Facebook

The most readable part of my SA4QE quotation photo is the last two lines, which I took from Chris Bell: "The books live on. Long live the words." 

See Lindsay's blog

Lindsay Edmunds 2010

I put a quotation up on my blog, tweeted a couple more, and wrote one more on yellow paper, which I left in a bookstore cafe:

The electric light changed a lot of things. It was an Irish writer, maybe Padraic Colum but I'm not sure, who said that traditional story-telling had to do with the circle of the firelight and the night all round. When electricity banished the night something was lost.

from "The Bear in Max Ernst's Bedroom,"
The Moment Under the Moment

Lindsay Edmunds 2009

I found this quotation around midnight last night:

The child by the window is not thinking of the brevity of life, the child has as yet no idea of it. Time! The child has all the time in the world, time to be intimately concerned with string and the space behind the sofa and the traffic of ants and beetles. There is a sadness in that too, in the child's not knowing how little time there is. Or is the sadness in our not knowing how much there is? Do we miss our grip on the moments of life, do we lose the time that we could find?

from The Moment Under the Moment

It was cold when I went out: 6F (-14C). I had to do another errand at the top of the day, and as I drove by places of commerce and apartment buildings, I wondered where in this world the quotation belonged. Finally, I put it on a low table by some comfortable sofas in the center of the big mall a few miles away. This is like putting it in the center of town.

Lindsay Edmunds 2008

The morning began with an irritating crowd of chores such as getting information together for my tax preparer, attending to old emails, etc. By the time I settled down to find a suitable quotation, I was not optimistic I could do anything wonderful on this rainy Monday.

But I found one right away, from Come Dance with Me. (Thanks, Russ, for being so good at what you do.) I wrote it out, slightly abridged for length, on yellow paper and drove the yellow paper and myself to the local Barnes & Noble, where I put the quotation prominently in the Dance section of the bookstore. Because Anthony's tag line is elegant and concise, I used it almost verbatim. No photo ops here -- but a bit of grace in the middle of the day.

“When I got home I opened the door, took a deep breath of silence, took my coat off, got Top Hat off the video shelf, poured myself some cask-strength Bowmore Islay Malt, added water judiciously, and settled back to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Fred by himself has never interested me much despite the wonderful things he could do; the enchanting Ginger, however, as a partner of independent spirit, gave him importance and validated his masculinity by acknowledging his mastery and following his lead. . . . Their dancing was real. Unlike western stars who perform impossible feats with handguns and western presidents who command hundreds of thousands of expendable stuntmen and women, Fred and Ginger actually did what they did.”

from Come Dance With Me

Bloomsbury Publishing, London (2005), pp. 88-89

This extract from his thirteenth novel is distributed on 4 February 2008 in celebration of his eighty-third birthday.

Lindsay Edmunds 2006

Dear Krakes,

The weather is stormy in Pennsylvania -- snow by tonight -- and I am just back from SA4Qation 2006. This year's quotation is from The Moment Under the Moment:

We make stories because we are story. The fabric of our myths and folk-tales is in us from before birth. The action systems of the universe are the origin of life and stories. The pattern of blue-green algae and the numinous wings of the Great Nebula in Orion and the runic scrawl of human chromosomes are stories.

from Household Tales
(The Moment under The Moment)

Underneath the quotation I wrote:

Today is the 81st birthday of Pennsylvania-born writer Russell Hoban. He lives in London now; he still writes books. Some fans of his work celebrate his birthday each year by leaving quotations from his books in random places -- all over the world.

Our story is here:
www.thoughtcat.com/sa4qe

I left the quotation on a cafe table in a big Barnes & Noble bookstore. It seemed right.

Lindsay Edmunds 2005

Friends,

Today is a bright Friday, and I didn't have to work, so I was able to go SA4quating.

First quote:

Her brown loaves were like bread from a fairy tale; her potato pancakes sizzled with lust and tasted of fidelity.

from Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

First place: the Galleria, Pittsburgh, Pa. The Galleria is an small upscale mall, with a parking garage and skylights. Sound system was playing "Daydream" by the Lovin' Spoonful. Williams Sonoma sells kitchen equipment; thus, it got the honor of the quote. I found a yellow pottery mixing bowl in a design called "circus." There was a lion. I turned the bowl so that the lion faced outward, and placed the yellow paper in front of the bowl.

Second quote:

When I was between twelve and thirteen I was lying in bed one night not asleep, not awake, and all at once I was looking down at myself from the ceiling. It wasn't a dream, I don't know what it was. I don't know anything about ecstasy. It happened another time that year too.

from Turtle Diary

Second place: South Hills Village, Pittsburgh, Pa. Sound system was playing "Am I Standing Still?" by Jewel. Walked here and there. Then, because I needed to replace a watch battery, I went to the watch-accessory kiosk on the lower level, where I ran into my aunt, who was replacing her watchband. I cannot tell you how weird and unlikely that was. We chatted, had coffee. Sometime during coffee, I decided to leave the quotation at Lazarus. (Lazarus is a local department store chain, now owned by Macys.) I thought to leave the yellow paper tucked under a pillow on a very expensive bed. The name of the bed was "Silverdream."

Below both quotations I wrote:

"Today (2/4/05) is Mr Hoban's 80th birthday, and this quotation has been left in tribute to him. To find out more about this remarkable writer, go to: http://www.thoughtcat.com/sa4qe."

Lindsay Edmunds 2004

Pennsylvania is where it all began for me. I was born here, in a hospital that later was turned into a beer factory, and I am living here again, after spending most of my adult life elsewhere. Pennsylvania also was where I was launched on my lifetime enthusiasm for Russ's books, when I checked a copy of Turtle Diary out of a semi-rural library in the middle of the state.

So it felt right to take my 2004 SA4QE quotation to the semi-rural library in Peters Township, Pennsylvania, where I now live. It is from Turtle Diary, of course.

This lovely quotation, about the healing power of a good relationship, has always been one of my favorites:

I didn't know how lonely I'd been until the loneliness stopped. Now when I looked at my flat it seemed to have been cleared of invisible wires criss-crossed in patterns of pain that had been there for years, I saw myself in days past, years past, stepping carefully and trying to keep my balance. There were the kitchen, the bathroom, the sitting-room, the bedroom, the spare room. There were the books, the drawing-table, the typewriter, Madame Beetle, the clutter, all the spaces and places where I stood or sat or lay down, all the things that I touched and used in my daily effort to piece together an eggshell life from broken fragments. George had given me so much that even if there came a time without George I could bear it now and not step carefully nor build my broken eggshell with mad patience. He hadn't done anything special, it was simply his way of being.

from Turtle Diary