John Lewis-Stempel · 308 pages
Rating: (692 votes)
“you rise at dawn in May you can savour the world before the pandemonium din of the Industrial Revolution and 24/7 shopping.”
“To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious.”
“Almost all the things I love are to do with grass. Geese, sheep, cows, horses. Even dogs eat grass.”
“They killed farming a year or so later. And they killed it by putting cabs on tractors. No longer was the farmer alive to the elements, or even close to the earth.”
“I have decided to sleep under the stars... Tonight heaven is my roof, and the hedges my walls... The field folds me in soft wings.”
“And nothing in nature is wasted. The bodies of the dead meadow ants will go to nourish the soil of the meadow. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Flesh to flesh.”
“High summer and one can hear the universe; so overwhelming is e accumulated sound of growing in the meadow and in hedges, of pollen being released, of particles moving in the heat, that all the minute motions together create a continuous him: the sound of summer.”
“Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao”
“If you're always scared of dying," Obispo had said, "you'll surely die. Fear's a poison; and not such a slow poison either.”
“A Strange Eastern Light “During the time of King Herod, Wise Men from the east came and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’” —Matthew 2:1”
“It was possible, as far as they knew, that the western shore, which in fifty years’ time would be christened New Jersey, was in fact the backdoor of China, that India, with its steamy profusion of gods and curries, lay just beyond those bluffs.”
“It was a bold, wild life for a faerie - most never even left their forests - but she was a bold, wild lass, and so were her daughter and granddaughter after her, and their place in the world was everywhere and nowhere, like gypsies on wing. No home had they but their caravans and campfires, and no family but the one they'd cobbled together of crows, creatures and kindred souls they'd met on their endless journey round and round the world.”
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