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Inspirational Quotations
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By Don Oldenburg He has written 70 books and sold more than 6 million of them. Bill Clinton has bought his work. Milton Berle read him. So has "Mr. Hockey," Gordie Howe. He gets up every day before dawn to write. He has almost wrecked his car jotting notes in traffic. He is possibly the most prolific "quote book" writer in America. Forging famous people's words into little quote books, those miniature page-turners you see at every checkout counter, Criswell Freeman has spread the wisdom of Texas, Florida, California, New England, girlfriends, gardening, salesmen, cowboys, country music, teachers -- and God. "You would think I would've seen nearly every quotation that has ever been quoted," says Freeman. "But you know what, it is like the ocean: Go catch a net full of quotes today, and there's a whole 'nother net full of quotes tomorrow!" "The taste for quotations
(and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist
taste." "It is the only honest way I could find to make a living in my pajamas" is how Freeman explains his career as an archaeologist of adages. At his home office on Nashville's south side, Freeman, 49, almost never bothers getting dressed to start chasing quotes. He's nearly obsessive about them. He pilots two computers, well-turned phrases are tacked around his desk, and his office is cluttered with newspaper clippings, books lying open and computer printouts in piles. In conversations,
says his wife, Angela Beasley Freeman, he's constantly citing pithy quotes, and
when someone says something he likes, he always asks: "Can I quote you on
that?" "One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip
quotations down people's throats -- and one always secretes too much
jelly." How many books he has written? "I don't know, actually," answers Freeman with an aw-shucks modesty that understandably might derive from long hours culling the best and brightest morsels of wisdom the world has to offer. Of course anyone who can spout insights from Henry David Thoreau and Lawrence Welk in the same breath doesn't really lose count of the books that bear his name: It's 70. "That number will increase by a couple of titles per month until people get tired of buying my books," says Freeman, who calls himself a paid hobbyist. "When they do, I'll have to get a job." As one might guess, selling quotes is not a college major. Freeman studied business administration at Vanderbilt University in the mid-'70s. Quotes were his off-time obsession. After college he joined the family real estate empire during Nashville's boom years, which lasted into the mid-'80s. When the market fizzled, he decided to become a psychologist. Four years at Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago earned him a doctorate in clinical psychology. But instead of opening what might have been a lucrative counseling practice, in 1994 Freeman published a 160-page self-help book about how to handle hard times. Besides his advice, "When Life Throws You a Curve Ball, Hit It" included inspirational quotes. It sold moderately well -- now up to 50,000 copies. But he couldn't ignore the phenomenal success of another Nashville author, advertising executive H. Jackson Brown Jr., whose 4-by-6-inch tome of tips, "Life's Little Instruction Book," was reviving widespread interest in small gift books. Freeman quickly wrote three diminutive quote books, founding his own press, Walnut Grove, to publish them. He didn't know the small gift book industry was about to mini-explode. "The next thing you know," he says, "those little quote books were jumping off the shelf at $5 or $6. And I had been working my rear end off to get somebody to buy the self-help books for 13 bucks." The first three -- "The Book of Country Music Wisdom," "Wisdom Made in America" and "The Book of Southern Wisdom" -- established the format for most of the Walnut Grove quote books to come. Typically they are 4 by 6 or 5 by 7 inches, 124 to 160 pages, three quotes per page, with artwork and "wisdom" in the title. "Reading any collection of a man's quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. . . . You won't go away hungry, but it's not quite satisfying." Christopher Buckley "A lot of my friends call them bathroom books," Freeman says. He attributes their success partly to their value as inexpensive gifts even children can buy and to their unabashed sentimentality. "These books are almost greeting cards on steroids," he says. But their secret goes much deeper, he is convinced: They are "the psychology of the common man. They sum up the principles of intelligent living in a way that is memorable, that strikes you at the moment, and is encouraging." Sort of 60-second therapy People need uplifting every day, says Freeman, putting on his psychologist hat. He quotes the three-word truism from the inspirational bestseller "The Road Less Traveled": " 'Life is difficult.' We all have a hard row to hoe. People like to be reminded of these timeless ideas and thoughts about how to hoe it." Freeman says compiling quote books goes beyond pulling a random assortment from Bartlett's. "No offense to Mr. Bartlett, but if I had to depend on his book to make my living, I'd starve. The quotes in there, they don't have much pop left," says Freeman, making a snoring sound. ("Bartlett's can never claim to be definitive. Only up to date and far ranging," responds Justin Kaplan, general editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and its 17th edition to be published in October. "It stays open to change and responsive to the taste, temper and events of its time." There's strategy to making a good quote book, Freeman says: Every page must have its own beginning, middle and end, so the book is like a collection of short stories. "If it's about adversity," he says, "the first quote says there is adversity, the middle quote is about overcoming it, and the last quote is about the rewards in overcoming it. "Gift books are 100 percent of the time sampled before they are purchased. So every page of that book has to be your sales brochure." And Freeman finds quotes that have "hooks" the way country music lyrics use hooks. "Like 'your cheatin' heart' catches the listener's attention," says Freeman, who has latent country songwriter tendencies and even wrote a song, "Hunker Down," that was recorded by the Country Gentlemen. Nothing he would quote himself on, though. "Nah, man," he says. "Besides, nobody ever really says anything for the first time -- and you can quote me on that." I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. Forget any pretensions with Freeman. "When you're a writer like I'm a writer, you are never going to win the Pulitzer Prize or see your name on the New York Times bestseller list," he says. "But every so often somebody will call you up." An excited gift shop manager at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago once called to say President Clinton had just bought a copy of "Wisdom Made in America." After he published "Wisdom of Old-Time Television," he got a call from the Lawrence Welk Museum in Escondido, Calif. A daughter of the late polka master had come in, and "when she opened the book and read the quotes from her daddy, she cried," says Freeman. "Well, that's what it's all about." That, and money. Freeman quotes Thomas Edison: "Anything that won't sell I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility and utility is success." He says his books sell, but he won't say exactly how well. "It's not like hitting the lottery," he says, but it's enough to pay the salaries of his six employees and keep him in pajamas. "Almost every day at some point, I'll walk upstairs and tell my wife how lucky we are," he says. "Not because we've got the world's fattest checkbook, but because we've got a good life." While he does have a couple of full-length books in mind, quote books are the ticket for now. "It is unlikely somebody is going to pick up one of my tiny books and say 'This changed my life.' But it is possible," he says, "it will change their day a little bit for the better." But wait. What's his all-time favorite quote? Freeman hesitates as if choosing among his children. "I guess it's Psalms 118:24," he says. " 'This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.' " Those are his words to live by. Maybe his tombstone inscription. "Another day of opportunity," he says. "It is so trite, but it is so profound." © 2002 The Washington Post Company |
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