Dog-Eared Book of Dog-Eared Quotations

What is a collection of dog-eared quotations? I fold the upper corner of a page I am reading if something of the author's prose strikes me. I spot something worthy of an aphorism or an epigram, a phrase or more that I would like to remember - and possibly quote. I dog-ear the page, as this habit is so richly termed, because underlining is beyond my physical powers as I drift off to Sleepytown, plus it would mar the book. I sheepishly admit that I perform this ritual not only on my own books, but library books as well. (I do fold the corners back to their original positions before placing a book in the outdoor Book Returns chute in hopes of mitigating or remediating any potential damage.)

This habit, shunned by many book connoisseurs as rude to the books, reveals me, whether I want that or not. It unintentionally creates a ghostly gestalt, a mirrored mosaic, of one reader.

If you have a similar habit or predisposition, this book is for you.

My selections are quirky, idiosyncratic, undemocratic, and wildly subjective. I didn't plan this book. It wasn't a research project. You might say it has been lying in wait, like a dog on the porch in August, its tongue lolling as it napped. In the spirit of a dog's finely attuned ear, I have included snippets not only from books but also from TV shows, movies, and songs. (Would that be called aural dog-earing? Dog-auraling?) But the vast majority of the quotations here are from my personal reading, collected without much thought of ever doing anything with them.

Categorizing and classification proved challenging. Early on, I felt that arranging the quotations alphabetically according to authors' last names would be boring and would expose my limitations as a reader. Instead, I concocted categories and chapter headings, aware that such an organizing factor could have gone in a thousand other directions. Even within my chosen framework, quotations could have been slotted into any number of alternative categories. Each was a judgment call. This collection begs for an index, but I decided against it with some misgivings to save costs. This may be a rationalization, but I also decided that an index restricts aimless browsing.

Finally, I had to draw a line somewhere, a line in time and space. If this effort were ever to see the light of day, I had to stop adding quotations to the manuscript in progress. That was hard. Without my doing that, you would not be reading this.

I invite you to ruminate over, recoil from, debate, ponder, brood over, or savor these morsels. Read them in any order, or in no order. And please fold back those pages if this is a library book.