landscapes Quotes

“The Nile: the longest river in the world, the mother of all life in Sudan.”

“And yet what precisely is this ‘greatness’? Just where, or in what, does it lie? . . . I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart.”

“Pacific fury flashing on rocks that rise like gloomy sea shroud towers out of the cove, the bingbang cove with its seas booming inside caves and slapping out, the cities of seaweed floating up and down you can even see their dark leer in the phosphorescent seabeach nightlight.”

“Nevertheless I go there every night even tho I don’t feel like it, it’s my duty (and probably drove me mad), and write these sea sounds, and all the whole insane poem ‘Sea.‘”

“All kinds of strange and marvelous things like the weird Ripley situation of a huge tree that’s fallen across a creek maybe 500 years ago and’s made a bridge thereby.”

“Then I knew we were getting to Grandma’s town. It was sound asleep in the hour before dawn. We slowed past the depot, and now we were coming to Grandma’s, the last house in town. It was lit up like a jack-o’-lantern.”

“On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the background, myriads of grotesque penguins squawked and flapped their fins; while many fat seals were visible on the water, swimming or sprawling across large cakes of slowly drifting ice.”

“Ants occupy the same landscape that we do. They have plenty to do, things to occupy themselves. On some level they’re very well aware of their environment. But we don’t try to communicate with them. So I don’t think they have the foggiest notion that we exist.”

“Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World, With the wonderful water round you curled, And the wonderful grass upon your breast, World, you are beautifully drest.”

“And then they met—the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve—and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories.”

“I stood in a wide corridor of mud, a wasted, shattered landscape, between two vast, unending rolls of barbed wire. [...] This was what the soldiers called “no-man’s-land.”

″..as the landscape changes from a modern built-up townscape, through to farm land, and finally back to the wilderness of the aborigines. The one thing that stays constant is a much loved old fig tree.”

“Suddenly he was aware of the deep whine of machines in the hills behind Sarah’s to the north. He raised his arm so that his hand seemed to slide over the perfect roll and curve of the hill range before him to the south. He fluffed the trees out there and smoothed out the sky. All was still and ordered, the way he liked to pretend he arranged it every day.”

They have captured not only the hardship of daily life on the border, but also the beauty of the landscape and the dignity and generosity of spirit that the Mexican Americans and the Mexican immigrants share.

“Losing concentration, Yukin almost fell as the land dipped beneath the grasses of the plains. Somehow he kept his footing, aware that the hunter birds were cruising the air currents in search of him. He knew he had no choice other than to flee.”

“He raised his eyes among the boughs of the horse-chestnuts, where they were at their thickest and allowed yellow rays only to glint in the shade transparent with sap; and he listened to the racket of the sparrows, tone-deaf, invisible on the branches.”

“It is not so buried in trees,” I replied, “and it is not quite so large, but you can see the country beautifully all round; and the air is healthier for you—fresher and drier. You will, perhaps, think the building old and dark at first; though it is a respectable house: the next best in the neighbourhood. And you will have such nice rambles on the moors. Hareton Earnshaw—that is, Miss Cathy’s other cousin, and so yours in a manner—will show you all the sweetest spots; and you can bring a book in fine weather, and make a green hollow your study; and, now and then, your uncle may join you in a walk: he does, frequently, walk out on the hills.”