Wednesday’s Words is the replacement for Thursday’s Quotables.

I haven’t read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott since I was very young.  I forgot just how much I loved it, and OH, THE FEELS!  SO MANY FEELS!  In fact, I forgot most of the book, so it doesn’t really feel like a re-read for me.  The reason I’m re-reading it at this particular time is because I’m participating in the Dusting Off the Shelves read-a-thon, and Little Women happened to be the ebook that I’ve owned the longest but never read.  It was my very first ebook when I bought my Nook back in 2010, and I never opened it.  I always meant to, but you know how it is.  I got distracted by other books.  So, in celebration of rediscovering a classic from my childhood, here are my favorite quotes:

“There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.”

This line is so heartbreakingly beautiful I don’t have any other words.

“Meg’s high-heeled slippers were dreadfully tight, and hurt her, though she would not own it; and Jo’s nineteen hair-pins all seemed stuck straight into her head, which was not exactly comfortable; but, dear me, let us be elegant or die.”

I think all women, and probably some men, have done this at one time or another.  At least I know I have, especially when I was younger.

“I like adventures, and I’m going to find some.”

I love Jo!  I’m pretty sure she was my favorite of the girls when I was a kid as well.

“Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.”

I don’t have a scribbling suit, or a room of my own (my desk is in the corner of the living room), and I’m not writing a novel, but I do go to a cafe with my notebook and sit for hours writing as if I have to get the words out of me or I’ll die.  I started doing that during my teenage years, and though I stopped writing for a long time, I quickly went back to old habits when I started up again.  Some of my favorite writers do the same thing, and knowing that makes me feel more a part of a community of sorts.