And I Quote... (Weekly No. 4)

"When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly." — Michel de Montaigne

I began collecting quotes in a brown journal my sophomore year of high school (the only reason I even know this is because of the date on my first entry). I got the idea to keep a journal of quotes from none other than Oprah Winfrey. One day she suggested to keep a log of your favorite quotes on her show, and like many Oprah-obsessed fans I did as she said. Hey, when Oprah speaks, you listen! Oprah has suggested many things over the span of her show, but that one suggestion ignited an intense fascination with quotes. I always loved quotes, but I never had a place to keep them, and I never even thought to write them down. What 15-year-old girl really kept a diary? Between lacrosse practice and cello lessons, I didn't have time. Fast-forward 9 years later, I have a diary -- the little yellow diary -- and somehow I have time. My "diary" is hosted by Tumblr, and the only reason I have time to write in my "diary" is because there is a Tumblr application on my Blackberry, which means my diary is with me every where I go, because my Blackberry is with me everywhere I go. 24/7, 365, 366 in a leap year.

It was challenging finding an online "quote lover" community; nothing where I could connect with other people who are as fascinated with quotes as I am, but I found plenty of websites devoted to sharing quotes: The Quote Garden, Brainy Quote, and The Quotations Page, which claims to be the oldest quotation site on the web. I even found a site that required a monthly fee to read the quotes on their site- Greatest Quotes & Quotations -- I really hope no one is paying for that. I did, however, find Facebook communities for One Tree Hill Quote Lovers, and for Slumdog Millionaire Quote Lovers. When searching "quotes" on Facebook, I was directed to All My Quotes, they completely lost me after that -- there were definitely no quotes on their page. Even Google loves quotes! Google gives you the option of adding a "Quotes of the Day" feature on iGoogle (customized homepage), courtesy of the oldest quotation site on the web. But still, no fully-functioning quote lover community.

Wait, what am I saying? Tumblr is easily one of the biggest communities for quote lovers. My favorite quote blog: Karishma -- one of Tumblr's most popular blogs -- exists partially on reader submissions. Same with Quote Book, another favorite. There are people constantly submitting quotes to these sites, the site operators (that's a fancy word for blogger or I should say Tumblr) then post the quotes on their site with a direct link to the person who submitted that quote. The connection is established. I can't tell you how many times I've fallen in love with a quote and followed the source to land on yet another quote lovers site. I found one of my favorite quote blogs yet this week because of that. Needless to say, Tumblr is for quote lovers.

One thing I love about quotes is there are quote categories for every walk of life: Age, Love, Marriage, Religion, Life, Politics, even Computers, and the web makes it so easy to find quotes within these categories. Categorizing quotes would have been extremely difficult before the web came into play, but now that's all the web seems to be-categories. Chris Anderson talks about mass markets turning into mass niches in The Long Tail, and this is demonstrated on the web with the overabundance of quote sites and blogs.

"The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in it's place is something new, a market of multitudes. . . Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches."

Before the web, a quote lover would have to peruse magazines, books, and watch movies and TV shows like a mad man in hunt of an enlightening or inspiring quote, but now quotes are constantly plucked from within these massive entertainment sources and categorized on the web for someone to access them easily. The quote websites are a niche within the web, and I would even go as far as to say the different categories on these quote websites are niches. The same person who is interested in marriage quotes, might not be interested in divorce quotes.

There is nothing I love more than perusing my favorite blogs and websites in search of a quote I have yet discovered. Collecting quotes has been a passion of mine for many years and I don't see this passion fading away any time soon (like others have *cough, cough the cello*); actually, I don't see it ever fading away, but I know that if it wasn't for the web, if it wasn't for Tumblr, collecting quotes wouldn't be an active hobby. I am almost obsessive when it comes to discovering new quotes and if I didn't have a place to easily find quotes, and a place to store them, and more importantly people to share them with (this, I have recently discovered, is something I really enjoy doing, and something I could have never done before the web), I'd probably be knitting pink socks, alone.