Refrigerators and Cars

“A book's a strange thing. It's ideas, feelings. It's fragile and complicated. You can't make them like refrigerators or cars.” 
                                                                                                   ― Étienne Davodeau, Les Ignorants

I got my first professional edit letter this weekend. And I was all set to tell you about how that was going for Well Written Wednesday. Not that I had the first clue what I was going to say yet. That was the plan.

And then Maya Angelou died Wednesday.

I spent most of Wednesday and a good portion of today trying to find something to say about that, and at this point I think I'm just accepting that brevity is the soul of wit. 

She's one of a very few select writers who get credit for getting me through my teens with a manageable, almost normal, amount of angst. Someone who made me understand the power of a universal story, and the visceral reality of the human condition.

My world was a better place for her being in it. That's probably the nicest thing you can say about anyone you don't actually know.

Photo from here under this license.