John Vaillant · 288 pages
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“Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“There is a saying among the peoples of the Northwest Coast: “The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife,” and Robert Davidson, the man responsible for carving Masset’s first post-missionary pole, imagines this edge as a circle. “If you live on the edge of the circle,” he explained in a documentary film, “that is the present moment. What’s inside is knowledge, experience: the past. What’s outside has yet to be experienced. The knife’s edge is so fine that you can live either in the past or in the future. The real trick,” says Davidson, “is to live on the edge.”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“It is an eccentric and uniquely human approach to resources: like plowing under your farmland to make way for more lawns, or compromising your air quality in exchange for an enormous car.”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“By the time these words are read, the centuries-old cedar, hemlock, and balsm of the cutblock known as Leah Block 2 will be a distant memory, long since processed into siding, two-by-fours, perhaps even the paper that has been recycled into the pages of this book.”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“British Columbia has been described as a banana republic, only with bigger bananas,”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“Their houses are the size of small airplane hangars; their carved”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“Traveling in these giant cedar canoes, the Haida would regularly paddle their home into, and out of, existence. With each collective paddle stroke they would have seen their islands sinking steadily into the sea while distant snow-covered peaks scrolled up before them like a new planet. Few people alive today have any notion of how it might feel to pull worlds up from beyond the horizon by faith and muscle alone.”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“June is a bad month for bugs in Alaska; generally it takes a good five or ten knots of breeze to keep them at bay, but even then they will tend to hover in your lee, waiting for the wind to die. Mosquitoes swarm so thickly up there that they can, like clouds, briefly form recognizable shapes. This is probably the only circumstance in nature where it is possible to look downwind and see a shadow of oneself infused with one's own blood.”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
John Vaillant
Born place: Cambridge, Massachusetts, The United States
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“Right as my eyes were about to move onto the next photo in the sequence, they froze and focused on something that vexed me so powerfully that I can now, as I write this, distinctly remember feeling dizzy and capable of only a single, repeating thought. Why am I in this picture?”
― quote from Penpal
“يا رب ألا لليلتي من نهار ؟ ألا لشمع الفلك من اشتعال ؟ قد قضيت الليالي الطوال في رياضة، وما أرى أحد قط ليالي مثلها، ومن الاحتراق كالشمع فقدت كل قوة، وماعاد بكبدي من ماء غير دماء القلب، وأصبحت كالشمعة أقتل بالإشعال والإحراق، لذا أحرق بالليل، وأقتل بالنهار. لقد قضيت الليلة أقاسي أهوال القتال، وغرقت من رأسي إلى قدمي في خضم الدماء، وفي كل لحظة تعرض لي مئات الأهوال، ولا أعلم متى يشرق صبحي ؟ وكل من مني بمثل تلك الليلة ذات مرة، أصبح شغله الشاغل في ليله ونهاره إحراق كبده. وكثيرا ما قضيت النهار والليل في لوعة، ولكن تلك الليلة كأنها يوم هلاكي، بل كأنني كنت قد خلقت ذات يوم، من أجلت تلك الليلة، فيا إلهي، ألا لليلتي هذه من نهار ؟ ألا لشمع الفلك من اشتعال ؟
يا رب، أهذه سمات هذه الليلة ؟ أو أن الليلة يوم القيامة ؟ أو أن شمع الفلك قد انطفأ بزفرتي ؟ أو أن حبيبي توارى من الخجل خلف الحجب ؟
الليل طويل حالك الظلمة كشعرها، ولولا ذلك لسلكت الطريق مائة مرة إلى محلتها، إنني أحترق الليلة من جوى العشق، ولم تعد لي طاقة لتحمل إيلام العشق، أين العمر لأصف ذلتي، أو لأتأوه بكامل إرادتي ؟ أين الصبر حتى أكف عن المسير، أو أن أعاقر الكؤوس كالرجال؟ وأين الحظ، حتى تصحو عزيمتي، أو أن تعينني في عشقها؟ وأين العقل، حتى يكون العلم قدوتي، أو بحيلة العقل أمثل أمامها ؟ وأين اليد حتى أضع تراب الطريق على مفرقي، أو أن أرفع رأسي من تحت التراب والدم ؟ وأين القدم حتى أعاود البحث عن محلة الحبيب ؟ وأين العين حتى أعاود رؤية وجه الحبيب؟ وأين الرفيق حتى يساعدني في غمي؟... وأين الصديق حتى يأخذ لحظة بيدي ؟ وأين القوة حتى أستطيع البكاء والنواح ؟ وأين الفطنة حتى أتصرف بحكمة ؟
ذهب العقل، وانقضى الصبر وولى الحبيب، فأي عشق هذا ؟ وأي ألم، وأي فعل؟”
― Farid ud-Din Attar, quote from The Conference of the Birds
“It is good to die on a hill of the llano, beneath the juniper--" -Narciso.”
― Rudolfo Anaya, quote from Bless Me, Ultima
“Am I a vampire?" Massie asked.
"Huh?" Alicia asked.
"Then why are you keeping me in the dark?”
― Lisi Harrison, quote from Invasion of the Boy Snatchers
“Altruism accrues little benefit to those lying cold in the gutter.”
― Raymond E. Feist, quote from Silverthorn
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