My Favorite Maya Angelou Quotes

If any of you has been getting my newsletter, you know that I’m including a quote each month. I’m pulling them from a file I keep of “Favorite Quotes.” I kicked it off in March with a Maya Angelou quote, and now that I look at my file I see I have so many from her.

She had so many beautiful things to say about women, and love, and fighting for your place in the world, and being part of humanity by being kind.

Here are some of my favorites. The last one sometimes makes me cry:

 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~ Maya Angelou

 

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” ~ Maya Angelou

 

“One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” ~ Maya Angelou

 

“Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.”  ~ Maya Angelou

Great Gift for a New Author

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I don’t think I shared this yet, but this was one of the coolest gifts I got at Christmastime — my brother’s wife gave me this beautiful silver paperweight (it’s about the size of a deck of cards), engraved with my first book title.

I opened it, took one look at my pen name, my book name, then burst into tears!

I think it just struck me as so “real” all of a sudden.

This was a very, very special gift! Thanks to my SIL Barbara!

Book Club at My House!

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So the April book club book, The Fault in Our Stars, was my selection, so volunteered to host. (Our book club switches around houses for hosting.)

Of course, for TFIOS, I had to have some orange tulips. (Points if you know why.)

For the menu, I decided to have pizza, since this was a YA book. But plain ol’ pizza didn’t seem exciting enough, so I decided to have an entire pizza-topping bar! Continue reading

Our 2014 Book Club List!

Nothing like realizing in … uh … MAY … that you’ve never published your book club list that you meant to publish in January. … (No one’s ever accused me of being too punctual).

But here it is, our book club’s big list for the year:

Have you read any of these?

  • Jan — Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloan)
  • Feb — Flight Behavior (Barbara Kingsolver)
  • Mar — Life After Life (Kate Atkinson)
  • Apr — The Fault in Our Stars (John Green)
  • May — Care of the Soul (Thomas Moore)
  • July — The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt)
  • Aug — The Sweet Life in Paris (David Lebovitz)
  • Sept — The Sun King (Nancy Mitford)
  • Oct — A Piece of My Mind (JAMA)
  • Nov — The Last Runaway (Tracy Chevalier)
  • Dec — Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)
  • Jan 2015 — The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz)

Have you read any of these? What’s on your reading list this year?

Here’s our 2013 book club list.
Here’s our 2012 book club list.
Here’s our 2011 book club list.
Here’s our 2010 book club list.
Here’s our 2009 book club list.
And here’s how we come up with our book club list each year.

My First Industry Review (Also Entitled: The Time I Stopped Breathing for a Second)

Okay, my first official review came in from one of the top trade magazines! (The trades include Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, and Library Journal. And, in romancelandia, Romantic Times as well.)

I actually stumbled across it Saturday night (even though it was dated Monday morning). I was working on the weekend, setting up a promo post for my blog, and when I went to get my Goodreads link, I saw that I had an uptick of followers on Goodreads all on the same day, May 1, which was last Thursday, and since I knew I hadn’t posted anything on that day, I figured there must have been a review of some sort out on the Interwebzz.

I Googled my book and, sure enough, a Publisher’s Weekly post came up! I about had a heart attack! (Because the way my mind works is this: Why didn’t anyone tell me PW reviewed me??? It must be because it was a bad review… omg, omg, they must hate me….)
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