I love collecting quotes like the ones I posted yesterday. It doesn’t matter if it’s from a philosopher or a bumper sticker slogan, if something about it catches my attention, I save it. Of course, a lot of my quotes have been emailed to myself and are buried deep within the thousands of notes on my laptop, but they’re there. 
I collect trivial information the same way, but I think a lot of writers do this. I’ll hear something or read something and think, wow, I have to remember that. The most bizarre topics can grab my interest–like the time I was flipping through channels and ended up watching an entire hour about container ships. I mean, how many people are going to find themselves riveted by this?
One of the guys at work called me Cliff Clavin after the Cheers character because, he said, I know everything. That was a nice ego boo, but far from true. The thing is that I know a little bit about a lot of things, but I know a lot about nothing. Chalk that up to eclectic interests, the U of MN’s School of Journalism which wanted me to have credits all over the school for that major, and being a writer who researches incredibly small details. I’ve got all kinds of minute facts swimming around in my head. Just don’t ask me what I did last week. 
And one last totally off-topic thing. I stumbled across a fabulous review yesterday for Eternal Nights. The reviewer said, among other things that “Eternal Nights by Patti O’Shea is one of the best romance novels I’ve read in a very long time” and a bunch of other nice stuff. You can check out the entire review at Nights and Weekends.
