Borrowed Words

One quote-collector's journey to find a home for their favourite inspiring phrases.

I collect words. I always have.

My camera reel is littered with photos of interesting signs, unusual place names and random quotes spotted out and about. I cannot bear to deface books by writing on them, so instead I copy favourite lines onto post-it notes and stick them around my house. And, since rediscovering my passion for writing and making it a daily part of my life in recent years, I have used my own notebooks to record words I like.

Beth Kempton’s books, writing sanctuaries and now Soul Circle are a constant source of great quotations – both things she says herself and the extracts she shares from others. Often just one line or phrase from a Soul Spark sticks with me and I have to listen again or pause the recording to make sure I write it accurately down! Plus, now all the wonderful writing I read on Substack is adding to my ever-growing collection of ‘borrowed words’.

The trouble is that my collection is scattered throughout dozens of notebooks, like needles hidden in a haystack amongst my own scribbled thoughts.

So, I decided to gather them together. The process turned out to be more time-consuming than I thought, due to the continual distraction of revisiting my own old words instead of focusing on just flicking through and pulling out the quotes. It was very much a walk down memory lane but that is probably a whole other Substack post in itself.

Eventually though, I had them all: a soulless list typed into a word document; tiny impersonal Times New Roman on a dull white background. It wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been. Granted, when I wanted to remember or return to something, I could quickly find it, but something was missing.

These words had all called out to me for a reason. Some had sparked my imagination or piqued curiosity. Others sent my thoughts wandering down an unexpected path. There were words I related to, something that spoke directly to my heart and felt like it had been written just for me. A few were special simply because of the way they sounded – an unusual rhythm or enchanting rhyme creating lyrical beauty.

That was it. That was what was missing.

My favourite words are beautiful and my neat, organised practical list was not. These words needed to be treasured. They needed to be cherished. And, most of all, they needed to be used.

I had collected them not to be stored away but because each was something I wanted to return to, something that I knew would be of help again in the future, something that would inspire a new idea each time I re-read them.

Thanks to my amateur Canva skills and recent fooling around with Amazon KDP, I was able to do that: My Writer’s Notebook was formed. Each of my favourite quotes presented in beautiful script and framed as they deserve. Then, after each one, I added a few pages of empty lines – a blank canvas for creativity and responding to the words.

I did it just for me. And if no-one else ever buys a copy, I am happy that I have this beautiful little notebook. But it costs nothing for it to sit there on Amazon and maybe, for no more than the price of just an empty notebook, there are others that might enjoy those quotes and prompts that I found so inspiring. You can find it here.

Using my notebook to inspire some journaling and poetry.

As I was writing this, I also realised exactly what my next project is going to be. I will continue reading and so there will inevitably be more quotes that need a home. The template is already created, so I am just going to take out the words from those beautifully framed quotation boxes, print myself an empty version of the notebook and hand-write the words in each time I find them. It will look something like this:

To all the fellow word-magpies out there, where do you keep your treasured finds and how do you organise your quote collections? I’d love to hear other’s ideas.