Grin and Beard It by Penny Reid (Notes)

◆ CHAPTER 1

▪ “Not all those who wander are lost.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

▪ Being funny is entirely dependent on timing. I’d learned early in my career to move on instead of repeating a joke, though I mourned those unheard jokes. They were the comedy equivalent of throwing seeds on rocks.

◆ CHAPTER 2

▪ “I'm not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.”                  

― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

▪ In my experience, there were three kinds of women: those that stripped at strip clubs, those that liked going to strip clubs, and those that disliked strip clubs. I understood all three perspectives and now I wondered which of the three she belonged to.

Damn if I didn’t hope it was the first one.

▪ Like recognizes like, and what I had on my hands here was a professional charmer.

◆ CHAPTER 3

▪ Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”

― Mark Twain

▪ Hey, Good Lookin’” by Hank Williams.

◆ CHAPTER 4

▪ “I have lost friends, some by death . . . others by sheer inability to cross the street.”

― Virginia Woolf

▪ I’m just saying, more often than not, a man has his place and a woman has hers, everybody pulls their weight and no one minds it much. We all do our chores and help each other. So stop with the cosmopolitan, enlightened judgmental shit.”

▪ Well-meaning revenge slurs between friends were one thing, well-meaning ignorant slurs between strangers were quite another.

◆ CHAPTER 5

▪ “The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seemed filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”

― Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems

▪ Basic Instinct

◆ CHAPTER 6

▪ If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

◆ CHAPTER 7

▪ Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

▪ never date another actor, because one day you might have to work with him.

◆ CHAPTER 8

▪ Nothing on earth can make up for the loss of one who has loved you.”

― Selma Lagerlöf

◆ CHAPTER 9

▪ The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”

― G.K. Chesterton

◆ CHAPTER 10

▪ “It's so much darker when a light is lost than it would have been if it had never shone.”

―John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

▪ My momma always told me that men, to a much greater degree than women, have difficulty dealing with derailed plans. She was right. And I was no exception.

◆ CHAPTER 11

▪ “The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.”

― Marcel Proust

 

◆ CHAPTER 12

▪ Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”

― L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

◆ CHAPTER 13

▪ “You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”

― Carl Sagan, Contact

▪ I would’ve been listening to one of my favorite podcasts, either Curious Handmade or The Renaissance Woodworker.

▪ no use buying a saddle for a horse that doesn’t want a cowboy.

▪ then, he’d often given me fatherly lectures. He was a man of few words, but the words he spoke were always worth listening to.

◆ CHAPTER 14

▪ Stephen kissed me in the spring,

Robin in the fall,

But Colin only looked at me

And never kissed at all.

 

Stephen’s kiss was lost in jest,

Robin’s lost in play,

But the kiss in Colin’s eyes

Haunts me night and day.”

― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

▪ “I liked him, Susie. I liked him a lot. And it’s an intangible like. Everything was so natural and unforced between us. I slipped into it unconsciously because liking him was so effortless. Being around him was both easy and exciting.”

◆ CHAPTER 15

▪ Lost Time is never found again.”

― Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almana

◆ CHAPTER 16

▪ Your perspective on life and loss comes from the cage you were held captive in.”

― Shannon L. Alder

▪ I think we all need someone who sees the best in us.”

◆ CHAPTER 17

▪ “People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.”

― Dalai Lama XIV

▪ Yet, until that moment, I’d never truly appreciated how audaciously he carried himself, as though assured of his place as master of the universe, presiding over the kingdom of I-don’t-give-a-fuck.

◆ CHAPTER 18

▪ “I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.”

― Jane Austen, Emma

▪ See, we had a schedule. The schedule was sacred. If we didn’t adhere to the schedule, people were grumpy and chaos reigned. In truth, we only had three firm rules in the all-male Winston household:

One: Don’t eat someone else’s leftovers.

Two: Do your chores.

Three: Stick to the schedule.

◆ CHAPTER 19

▪ For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”

― Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

▪ No, Sienna. That’s not it, either. Your fame doesn’t frighten me. Although, if I’m honest with myself, it was overwhelming when I saw it firsthand. The real issue is that I might be good at my job, but I’ll never be near as wildly successful at my job as you are with yours. And that’s fine by me. My ambitions aren’t career-oriented, they’re family-oriented. If I have wild success, and I hope I do, it’ll be as a husband and father, a brother and an uncle. It might not make a lot of sense to you, but I can’t start something, invest in someone, I know from the get-go is going to be temporary.”

◆ CHAPTER 20

▪ “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

▪ Apathy between family members makes the blood they share turn to water.’”

◆ CHAPTER 21

▪ Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

― Rumi

◆ CHAPTER 22

▪ The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.”

― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

◆ CHAPTER 23

▪ I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect.”

― Mahatma Gandhi, Fools, Martyrs, Traitors: The Story of Martyrdom in the Western World

▪ Jethro, labeling kids isn’t fair—it doesn’t matter if the label is good or bad. It puts them in a box and makes them feel like they have to live inside it.”

▪ Your family is so proud of you. Most people live up or down to the expectations set by their label. Very few people are able to transcend it.”

▪ It’s frustrating, as you say, having the history of the label. I see it in people, the way they look at me, what they expect. They expect dishonesty. They expect me to be a joke.”

I felt compelled to say, “People expect me to be a joke, too.”

Jethro gave me a soft, sympathetic smile. “You are more than the jokes you told when you were five, or eight, or thirteen.”

“And you are more than the mistakes of your youth. You are more than the label you’ve been assigned by people who might love you, but don’t really know who you are anymore.”

▪ “I suppose it’s part of why we seek out a partner. Why we’re driven to build a new family, pursue new friendships. There’s freedom in being a blank canvas to another person and having some control over what is painted on that canvas.”

◆ CHAPTER 24

▪ As long as I could hear his voice, I was quite lost, quite blind, quite outside my own self.”

― Anaïs Nin

▪ As a carpenter I know for a fact, if you want something to last, you have to build it to last. If we wanted to establish something lasting, we can’t build our foundation on just the physical.”

“You mean lust.”

I smirked at the disappointment in her tone. “Yeah, I guess I do. Even if we have enough lust between us to build a city.”

◆ CHAPTER 25

▪ Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”

― Betty Friedan

▪ Think of how much better the world would be if people craved compliments about the beauty of their heart rather than the beauty of their face.”

▪ a man’s place is in the kitchen

▪ When an opportunity presents itself, and you have a choice of either living life—risky as it might be—or continuing to do what’s expected . . .” Claire paused, waiting for me to meet her gaze, a knowing smile curving her lips.

She was quoting me, one of my favorite lines from my first film, Taco Tuesday.

I returned her grin and finished the quote, “You have to grab that regal centaur by the mane and ride it over the rainbow of opportunity.”

We finished together, “Or else it might mistake you for a unicorn and try to impregnate you.”

◆ CHAPTER 26

▪ In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”

― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

▪ Your children will resemble—in looks and temperament—your husband’s siblings and your siblings.”

▪ Jethro didn’t make me a coward. I made me a coward, more precisely, my feelings for him did. Every day, every moment we spent together, they grew bigger, and I grew quieter. I felt myself retreating, but didn’t know what to do about it. Saying nothing felt so much safer than admitting the truth and risk pushing him away. 

▪ It’s good for a man’s soul to be tortured in this way.

◆ CHAPTER 27

▪ No effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”

― Helen Keller

▪ Are you telling me you haven’t been—haven’t been . . . se avienta el mañanero because you require complete privacy?”

“What does that mean?”

“Literally translated, it’s throwing the morning one, you know—getting it on in the morning

◆ CHAPTER 28

▪ Things are sweeter when they're lost.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

▪ you can achieve a lot more with humor and entertainment, reach more hearts and minds, than with the most thoughtful and well-researched letter to the editor. And because most of the words used to describe only women—not all, just most—are really rather negative or condescending. Like the term ‘working-mom.’ No one says ‘working-dad.’ Why do we do that? Don’t mothers have it hard enough?”

◆ CHAPTER 29

▪ Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

― Kahlil Gibran

◆ CHAPTER 30

▪ “I am free, and that is why I am lost.”

― Franz Kafka

▪ I’m after a woman who likes sex but doesn’t put the lust part above the intelligence part. She could have a hundred partners for all I care, just as long as they’ve been vetted for psychopathic tendencies. I have four rules. Number one: don’t invite a person into your body if you wouldn’t invite her into your kitchen. Number two: the act needs to take place in a clean environment. Number three: precautions need to be taken to protect from disease and pregnancy. And Number four: don’t ration the passion, i.e. put your best fuck forward.”

▪ Here’s reality: People get hurt and they move on or they don’t. You can’t have it both ways. You either get to be famous, and deal with the hassle that comes with it, or you leave it all behind. Own your shit, Sienna. And let Jethro own his. And then get married and own that shit together.”

▪ My job meant that privacy was a luxury, but so what? Either I was going to live my life alone, avoid relationships, give in to the fear of hurting the people I cared about, or I was going to own my shit. 

◆ CHAPTER 31

▪ We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent, our bodies can't contain it.”

― Amy Harmon, Making Faces

◆ CHAPTER 32

▪ When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”

― Socrates

▪ “It’s good to care, Sienna. It’s good to care about what others think, but only when those other people matter.”

She lifted her chin and gazed at me, her long lashes brushing against her cheeks as she blinked. “But how do you balance it? I mean, I care what my parents think because I love them and know they love me, and I trust their judgment. But, in the end, I always just do what I think is best.”

“Then that’s what you keep doing. I trust your heart and so should you.”

▪ You can’t ever be certain of another person, and that’s where faith comes in

◆ CHAPTER 33

▪ Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.”

― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

▪ “If you don’t fight for what you love, then you have nothing worth losing.”

▪ even worst-case repercussions are worth a lifetime of happiness and freedom

▪ Because, as Jethro had said, it’s good to care about what others think, but only when those other people matter.

◆ CHAPTER 34

▪ Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

― Norman Cousins

▪ Just ’cause I’m good at making cake doesn’t mean I want to make it for the rest of my life, you know? Just ’cause you’re good at something doesn’t mean that’s what makes your heart happy. I sometimes feel like I’ve become the banana cake lady, and I’m only twenty-two. But that’s it. That’s who I am. My life is set, and there’s no escape. I’ll be ninety-nine years old, still making banana cakes at my momma’s bakery.”

◆ CHAPTER 35

▪ Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”

― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

▪ Live and learn.”

▪ Our past would always be part of us, but it would never wholly define us, either together or as individuals. Each moment was a decision. We could either live up or down to people’s expectations, or blow them completely away. We had no control over what other people decided to think, but we did have control over our own actions, who we wanted to be, and how we lived our life.

◆ Extra Scene – Sometime Later . . .

▪ practical sort, short on words, big on actions.