from books I’ve read-
“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.” – G.K. Chesterton
“Separating reality from superstition is the better part of knowledge.”- Sara Friedman, Celebrating the Wild Mushroom
“Any scientist worth listening to must be something of a poet, must possess the ability to communicate to the rest of us his sense of love and wonder at what his work discovers.”- Edward Abbey, The Journey Home
“Walking makes the world much bigger and therefore more interesting. You have time to observe the details.”- Edward Abbey, The Journey Home
“Self confidence is the first giant step to success, for it leads to inventiveness.” – Thalassa Cruso, Making Things Grow Outdoors
“Whatever sanity I had was thanks to writers, to books that either helped me forget my troubles or helped me understand them.” – Susan Richards, Chosen by a Horse
“One must know the path one runs even if the ground underfoot is not as one chooses.” – Clare Bell, Ratha’s Creature
“Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look.” – Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock
“I would rather be mocked for doing a good thing, than to be respected, knowing I have done wrong.” – Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind.
“I’m mindful of Ben Franklin’s definition of a reasonable creature as one who can come up with a reason for whatever he wants to do.” – Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
“Mushrooms are hinges in nature, now turning toward death, now toward new life.” – Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
“Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.“- Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
“Keeping secrets from young ears only plants seeds in between them” – Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead
“Because people never excelled at anything until they had failed at it for a very, very long time.” – Lauren Marks, A Stitch of Time
“The only permanent things about man are his waste. There is a bittersweet state of existence that all natural things go through, a stage when they stop being what they were and start being something else.” – Marc Hamer, How to Catch a Mole
“the world appears beautiful so that the living may love being alive in it . . . Beauty is the thing that makes life worth the time it takes. Beauty makes life worth the effort, the risks and the frights and the struggles that being alive requires. Beauty is the reward our brains give us for making the effort to stay in the world. Beauty is what eases that effort into joy. Beauty makes our smiles, and gets us past the tears. I think it’s that profound, and that fundamental . . . Beauty makes us love what it takes to live.” – Carl Safina, Becoming Wild
“It is purely a human affliction to be blessed or cursed by dreams and to measure the success or failure of our lives by them. But instead of bemoaning fate, we humans might do well to count our blessings. In many places . . . most things don’t live long enough to pursue dreams . . . most things run to stay just ahead of nightmares.” – Pete Dunne, Arctic Autumn
“Don’t surrender to your fears- hold them up to the light and pick them apart. They may be flimsier than you think.” – Amanda Sullivan, Organized Enough