I recently read Brian Morton’s novel Starting Out In The Evening and was struck by this passage on “the glory of choosing your own life, even when it takes ruthlessness to do it.”

You seize your freedom in a spirit of rebelliousness, exuberance, defiant joy. But to live that choice — over the weeks and months and years to come — requires different qualities. It requires that you turn hard, turn rigid. Because it isn’t a choice that the world encourages, you have to wear a suit of armor to defend it.

My 19-month-old daughter Sophie pulled this bookmark out of a book on the shelf recently. It’s from a bookstore I worked at fresh out of college in ‘93. I don’t know which book she pulled it out of. She just walked over and held it up to me as if she knew I would want or need it.

The phrase I wrote on the bookmark:

…walked with a stagger of experience…

I don’t recall what book the quote is from. The phrase, however, has just as much punch for me as it did back then.

Those days I noted the phrase in a bookmark as I read the book. Today, I scan the bookmark with the phrase on it and post it on my blog.