During my rewrites on The Loves of Ruby Dee, I discovered I wrote a lot about dying and living and loving. I didn’t know I knew all this stuff, but I guess I do listen to country music. I found some pearls of wisdom to chuckle over and think about. With some I noted the location in the novel, but others I did not. Sorry.

She could tell Miss Edna things she would never have told anyone else, and she saw no reason to stop just because Miss Edna was dead.  (chapter 2, The Loves of Ruby Dee)

She had come to learn early, though, not to expect human beings to make sense. Humans were perhaps the only beings in the good Lord’s universe that on a regular basis did not make sense. This belief freed Ruby Dee, as a member of the human race, from the constant need to make sense or explain herself. (chapter 2, Loves of Ruby Dee)

Will figured the old man wasn’t going to keel over dead any minute—his meanness wouldn’t allow him to. He’d just die straight up.

 Miss Edna had given Ruby Dee all the lovely handkerchiefs she owned. “Someone who cries as much as you do should always have a hanky,” Miss Edna had said…

Cleaning and crying seemed to Ruby Dee to go right together. (chapter 9, The Loves of Ruby Dee)

“When you go to join your life with someone else’s, it matters a lot less how you feel about them than deciding to be devoted to them.”

And this from the incomparable, late William Zinsser:

What they should say is: ‘Don’t be afraid to fail.’ Failure isn’t the end of the world. Countless people have had a bout of failure and come out stronger as a result.  ~William Zinsser, Writing About Your Life

Blessings, dear people.
CurtissAnn