A Participatory Post

As a rule, I hate quotes. Quotes on calendars. Quotes on posters. Quotes on applications for MFA programs. They're the worst kind of shallow, because they pretend to be deep. (The exception to this, of course, is anything ever uttered by Mark Twain.)

But I'm here today to, in a way, give the quote its due. I've been trying to think of the things that friends, family and co-workers have said to me that have really cut through and left a mark. They might be meaningful. They might be true. Or they might be just plain odd. So far, the list includes:

"Your entire job is to get beat up by smart people." - Pat Rosenstiel (co-worker)

"If you eat one meal a day and don't get rained on at night, you're doing fine." (my sister)

"Every married man knows that at some point, he's going to find a woman he thinks is better for him." (my father, said cryptically after I shared the story of my best friend's parents divorcing because his father fell in love with someone else... strange thing to tell your son... I let it go)

"You can't really dust for vomit." (Nigel Tufnel)

Okay, scratch that last one. I don't want this to turn into "My Favorite Movie Quotes." I'm looking for anything anyone has heard in his or her lifetime (from a real person) that actually provided either a "mentor moment" or an enigmatic scratch of the head. In the meantime, I'm going to keep thinking.