Tarek Quotes Clever

It’s strange which quotes, words or sentences stick with us over the years. Some people remember the funny one-liners. Some remember the inspiring and the uplifting. Some latch on to the thought provoking. They come from many sources - Books, songs, movies, plays, speeches and everyday conversation.

Personal revelation of the week - I love great quotes. I think it’s fantastic that one line can inspire so much thought or laughter, tears or imagination. You may have noticed that I started my last post with a quote. I am the quote king, hear me wax lyrical.

The reason I bring this up is that about 6 months ago, at the Tuttle Club in London, Mario Cacciottolo asked me to think of something important that someone once told me. You see Mario runs a photography project called, wait for it,  Someone Once Told Me. The premise is simple - Think of something great that someone told you, write it down on a big piece of paper and get your photo taken in glorious Greyscale. Simple, elegant and the results are quite amazing.

It took me a while to remember something that had stuck with me and that had a suitably interesting story behind it. Well that’s not quite true, I knew immediately which quote would be perfect, I was just trying to think of something else that wasn’t so personal. Most of the quotes I remember aren’t from people I know, just look at the quotes on my Facebook page - A poem, a song, a book and a TV show. Clearly I hadn’t been surrounding myself with funny, interesting or inspiring people.

The Icon

I ended up having to go with the personal quote, after all that was the whole idea, and the results can be seen in the picture above. It was said to me by my mother in September 2001: “Be good! And if you can’t be good, be careful!”. (My first thought was that she’d be annoyed that I let the world know that she had started a sentence with a conjunction.) Mario recorded an audio clip of me explaining the story behind the quote and why it meant so much to me. If you’re interested you can hear it by clicking on the Audio icon (left) in the top left-hand corner of the picture on the SOTM site.

Mario is constantly on the look out for more people to contribute to SOTM. You can email him directly to arrange for him to come and take your photo or you can do it your self and sent it in via the website or the SOTM Flickr group. He is also looking for contributions in foreign languages and I’m going to try and see if I can arrange some Arabic contributions from Qatar.

I must say I’m very happy that I went with that particular quote. It feels good to let a story that meant something to you out into the world like that and the handful of comments the picture got on SOTM meant a lot to me. You should try it too, I’d love to hear what Someone Once Told You.