Make Believe

It's been a while since I've shared some of my favorite quotes that I've found recently. Quotes always make me smile. Hopefully these will make you smile too.

The first one I'm going to share is from the book "The Paris Wife" and I'm only three chapters in but I'm really enjoying it so far. It's about Ernest Hemingway's wife in the 1920s. This is how the second chapter began:

"There's a song from that time by Nora Bayes called 'Make Believe' which might have been the most lilting and persuasive treatise on self-delusion I'd ever heard. Nora Bayes was beautiful, and she sang with a trembling voice that told you she knew things about love. When she advised you to throw off all the old pain and worry and heartache and smile--well, you believed she'd done this herself. It wasn't a suggestion but a prescription...I felt it speaking directly to me: Make believe you are glad when you're sorry. Sunshine will follow the rain... I'd had my share of rain."

The chapter ends with this:
"--but there was a something new, too, a glimmer of potential. It was just possible the sun was on its way. In the meantime, I would hum Nora Bayes and do my damnedest to make believe." 

I can't really articulate exactly why that quote spoke to me so much. But it was one that stirred in my soul. The kind where it sits in your gut and simmers there while you mull it over. The kind where you feel a connection that someone out there gets it and understands. And can put those feelings into words when you can't. And those are my favorite kind.

Here are some more that I love as of late:

I hope you enjoyed those as much as I do. And if life gets busy, I hope you see the glimmer of potential that the sunshine is coming just like The Paris Wife says or, at least make believe.