Words I Wish I Wrote: A Collection of Writing That Inspired My Ideas - Hardcover

Fulghum, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060175605 ISBN 13: 9780060175603

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1997

Synopsis

The author shares the words of writers who have inspired his own work, presenting a thematically organized collection that encompasses the works of authors ranging from Jerry Garcia to Albert Camus to Beatrix Potter, accompanied by personal commentary onthe sources

About this title

Review

Robert Fulghum, the part-time Unitarian minister whose gentle and humorous stories have made him a bestselling author many times over (beginning with All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten), pays tribute to the writers who inspired him in Words I Wish I Wrote. He confesses that at one particularly low moment in the late '50s, he was dredged up from the Slough of Despond by reading the works Albert Camus, whose gaze over a deeper abyss gave Fulghum hope. It was that experience that led Fulghum to seek out writings with uplifting messages. The result is this compilation of brief passages from the likes of Wallace Stevens ("After the final no there comes a yes"), Tom Robbins ("Real courage is risking one's clichés"), and Buckminster Fuller ("God is a verb").

From the Inside Flap

In Words I Wish I Wrote, Robert Fulghum reveals the works of writers who have inspired him. During the past four decades he's reviewed and revised the basic principles of his philosophy many times, sometimes as an exercise in personal growth, but more often in response to individual crisis. Then at fifty, seeking a simplicity to counter the complex thinking of his college years, Fulghum wrote a summary essay professing that all he really needed to know he learned in kindergarten. As he approached his sixtieth year, Fulghum became curious about what in his outlook had changed and what had endured.

On review, Fulghum explains, everything he has ever said and thought and written is transparent to him now. As hard as he has tried to speak in his own voice, much of what he's said is neither original nor unique. The best ideas are often old and are continually being revived, recycled, renewed. Wherever his search took him, Fulghum found that someone else has been there before. And more often than not, that person has chosen words Fulghum wishes he had written, using language he can't improve upon. To Fulghum, however, this isn't a discouraging realization. It's a recognition of companionship, which is an affirming consolation.

The confirming statements, quotes, and credos that Fulghum recorded in his journals for years are collected here, representing the most important ideas underlying his living and thinking. They are organized thematically into such chapters as Companions, God, Bene-Dictions, Contra-Dictions, Simplify, and Believe. Each begins with Fulghum's own insightful, introductory words, followed by inspiring passages drawn from a diverse group of sources, from Jerry Garcia toAlbert Camus, Dylan Thomas to Franz Kafka. At the end of each chapter, Fulghum offers readers his own personal commentary on the sources -- where he was introduced to their words, why he returns to them again and again, and how they may change you.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0060175605
• ISBN 13: 9780060175603
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240