Woods Quotes

I think people who don't know the woods very well sometimes imagine it as a kind of undifferentiated mass of greenery, an endless continuation of the wall of trees they see lining the road. And I think they wonder how it could hold anyone's interest for very long, being all so much the same. But in truth I have a list of a hundred places in my own town I haven't been yet. Quaking bogs to walk on; ponds I've never seen in the fall (I've seen them in the summer - but that's a different pond). That list gets longer every year, the more I learn, and doubtless it will grow until the day I die. So many glades; so little time.

Bill McKibben

He liked the grand size of things in the woods, the feeling of being lost and far away, and the sense he had that with so many trees as wardens, no danger could find him.

Denis Johnson

He'd grown unused to woods like this. He'd become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things.

Michael Montoure

As soon as he had disappeared Deborah made for the trees fringing the lawn, and once in the shrouded wood felt herself safe.She walked softly along the alleyway to the pool. The late sun sent shafts of light between the trees and onto the alleyway, and a myriad insects webbed their way in the beams, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder. But were they insects, wondered Deborah, or particles of dust, or even split fragments of light itself, beaten out and scattered by the sun?It was very quiet. The woods were made for secrecy. They did not recognise her as the garden did. ("The Pool")

Daphne du Maurier

Try this." O'Grady smiled. "It's the only thing we drink. It'll warm your insides."t"What is it?" Asked the ever cautious Waldo.t"We call it the Forest Flaming Special. Go ahead-drink up."t"Well, okay...." Waldo lifted the cup and nearly dropped it when saw his name printed clearly on the side. t"We've been expecting you." Explained Fred, beginning to laugh.

Donald Jeffries

I thought how wise he was to lure his rival out into the woods, where every fight's fair.

Peter Geye

...we do not own these woods. They own us.

Timothy Goodwin

If a tree falls in the woods when no one is there, does it still make a noise? If a girl dies in the woods when no one is there, does anyone care? If no one knows I am here, do I even exist?

Lisa Jahn-Clough

I'm here because all fairy tales take place in the woods, King Cole, even those that don't.

Bill Willingham

Haven't you noticed most of your fairy tales take place in the woods?” a man a few feet from me says. He stutters and lets a belch escape him. “That's why we're out here. We were hoping Jimmi would bring enough damsels for us all, though!

Celia McMahon

Disheartened, enraptured, and strangely lightheaded, Grady emerged from the trees and walked back through town to the island bridge, his ankles and hands marked up with thorn scratches.

Molly Ringle

Though it's fearful, Though it's deep, though it's dark And though you may lose the path, Though you may encounter wolves, You can't just act, You have to listen. you can't just act, You have to think. Though it's dark, There are always wolves, There are always spells, There are always beans, Or a giant dwells there. So into the woods you go again, You have to every now and then. Into the woods, no telling when, Be ready for the journey. Into the woods, but not too fast or what you wish, you lose at last. Into the woods, but mind the past. Into the woods, but mind the future. Into the woods, but not to stray, Or tempt the wolf, or steal from the giant-- The way is dark, The light is dim, But now there's you, me, her, and him. The chances look small, The choices look grim, But everything you learn there Will help when you return there. The light is getting dimmer.. I think I see a glimmer-- Into the woods--you have to grope, But that's the way you learn to cope. Into the woods to find there's hope Of getting through the journey. Into the woods, each time you go, There's more to learn of what you know. Into the woods, but not too slow-- Into the woods, it's nearing midnight-- Into the woods to mind the wolf, To heed the witch, to honor the giant, To mind, to heed, to find, to think, to teach, to join, to go to the Festival! Into the woods, Into the woods, Into the woods, Then out of the woods-- And happy ever after!

Stephen Sondheim

Each October I walk into the woodslooking for bones: rabbit skulls,a grackle spine, the pelvis of a deerwith the blood bleached out. What diedin the lush of roses and mintshines out from the tangle of twigsthat bind it to the placeof its last leaping. The living lackthat kind of clarity. In late April,when the water spreads out and outtill everything is lilies and seepage,there is only the mystery of tracks,a rustle receding in the many reeds.And so the bones accumulateacross my windowsill: the flightlesswings and exaggerated grins,the silent unmoving remindersof where the glories of April lead.

Charles Rafferty

...as if Hollywood were the name of the enchanted forest where you loose yourself and find yourself, again; the wood that changes you; the wood where you go mad; the wood where the shadows life longer than you do.

Angela Carter

Deep silence fell about the little camp, planted there so audaciously in the jaws of the wilderness. The lake gleamed like a sheet of black glass beneath the stars. The cold air pricked. In the draughts of night that poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter.("The Wendigo")

Algernon Blackwood

Spiders evidently as surprised by the weather as the rest of us: their webs were still everywhere - little silken laundry lines with perfect snowflakes hung out in rows to dry.

Leslie Land

If you're a boy, any display of sensitivity is gay. Compassion is gay. Crying is supergay. Reading is usually gay. Certain songs and types of music are gay. 'Enola Gay' would certainly be thought gay. Love songs are gay. Love itself is incredibly gay, as are any other heartfelt emotions. Singing is gay, but chanting is not gay. Wanking contests are not gay. Neither is all-male cuddling during specially designated periods in football matches, or communal bathing thereafter. (I didn't invent the rules of gay - I'm just telling you what they are.)

Gavin Extence

In spring, 1937, of course, families still rode the rails because of the Depression, which everyone said was already in the history books as the worst ever. The jobs still couldn’t be found, at least for most people. Everett itself—the smaller, poorer, little brother lying north of Seattle—ached with the unemployed and the hopeless. The labor union tensions in the woods still festered and got bloody at times. But Skybillings—and the railroad logging shows of the Cascade Mountains—felt like they were, inch-by-inch, rebuilding America.

Ronald Geigle

We are not on our fours, howling in the woods, only because guilt saves us.

Nelson Rodrigues

Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory.

J. Tuzo Wilson

sometimes falling raincarries memories of betrayalthere in the woodswhere she was not meant to betoo young she believesin her right to be freein her bodyfree from harmbelieving naturea wilderness she can enterbe solacedbelieving the powerthat there be sacred placethat there can be atonement nowshe returns with no fearfacing the pastready to riskknowing these woods nowhold beauty and danger

Bell Hooks

Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again... said a shadow at the window... and you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time...But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.

Emily Carroll

I was in a copse of pine trees, and the pine was overpowering my scent. The pheromones of the big cat mingled with the pine and I spun around. I was smelling and looking for the flash of white, but I couldn’t see it. I grew angry and I pawed at the earth. The aroma of the soil cleansed my nose as I leaned down and sniffed deeply. I slowly closed and opened my eyes. As I looked ahead I saw something. tThere, further on, I had another glimpse of the large white cat. She was stopped and her hindquarters were in the air. I stared, trying to figure out what she was doing. Her forepaws and head were on the ground, but her hind was wiggling. She was next to a tree, marking it, so I slowly paced in a zigzag pattern as I walked close to her. I was being cautious because poachers had been known to employ shifters to entice real animals in the wild. She turned her head and growled at me. I took it as an invite to come closer. I ran up to her and started circling. She was an albino panther as I thought. I paced closer, breathing deep. I was in the middle of Ohio, outside of a lost cougar and a few bobcats there were no big cats here, at least not counting lycanthropes, and this creature didn’t smell like one of those. Her rump almost wagged in anticipation, and I felt my tiger body respond.tI circled her, taking a swipe in her direction to see if she was going to respond negatively to me. The pink eyes followed me and she growled. I walked up to her, sniffed her face and neckline. I didn’t smell any other male on her, and I walked to her raised rump. Burying my nose in her groin I smelled deeper, and she shifted her body. tI felt it before I could see it. She was shifting, changing from albino panther to human. I sat on my hindquarters as I watched. Her white fur seemed to melt from her, sliding upwards, starting with her back legs. The flesh and fur on her feet slid forward, leaving human feet and calves. It was fully fleshed, unlike some lycanthrope changes when they’re younger. The calves of her legs appeared, and slowly slid up. The panther flesh was sliding forward, slowly and methodically. Across her ass and groin, now lower back and stomach. The pheromones I smelled earlier were coming from her, the human form. I stood and started pacing behind her, and her panther head shook in a very human gesture. I stopped, fighting the desire to lean forward and lick her wetness with my large tongue. The flesh was sliding forward and as her teats turned into breasts, I growled in need. Next were her shoulders and arms, then her head and hands. As the transformation ended, there was a pile of fur and flesh lying in front of her. Her human form was beautiful; a full figured woman with long white hair, that was perfectly natural. She looked to be in her early forties, but didn’t have a line on her face that she didn’t want. In the corners of her eyes were small, but beautiful, crow’s feet, laugh lines surrounded her mouth. She laid out with her former form under her, laying on it, propped up by her elbows. She smiled with the confidence of someone who was used to being in charge. Her long hair flowed around her shoulders, framing her body. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who.

Todd Misura

When her mother combed Harriet's hair, she said that the woods were disgustingly muddy and mosquito-ridden. During her history unit on pioneers, her father bashfully admitted that he couldn't pitch a tent, barbeque, or fight off bears in a forest. They both agreed that such a place was unsafe. Hotels were better.

Kimberly Karalius

A sense of desolation settled within me: a cold, slimy stone lodged under my lungs. There was nothing happy about the woods, I thought, especially at night.

Craig Davidson

A cold wind raced across the surrounding fields of wild grass, turning the land into a heaving dark-green ocean. It sighed up through the branches of cherry trees and rattled the thick leaves. Sometimes a cherry would break loose, tumble in the gale, fall and split, filling the night with its fragrance. The air was iron and loam and growth. He walked and tried to pull these things into his lungs, the silence and coolness of them.But someone was screaming, deep inside him. Someone was talking. ("Hunger")

Charles Beaumont

The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rape—my word. The subsequent silencing and exile—misplaced shame—were the catalysts for me to finally break free of my mother's grasp and my voicelessness and do what I truly wanted, alone. I wished to prove myself as independent and valid and strong—to my mother, and to the world. I'd believed I had needed something huge and external that no one could deny was impressive, so I could show my family I was able—so they could finally know that I was strong.Instead I had shown myself.And it felt wonderful.

Aspen Matis

I'd have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me. I'd let my no echo against the mountains.And better to feel bad for a moment saying no—and stop it—than to get harmed.I would take better care.That small word, no. I'd see its deity.

Aspen Matis

I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness and loneliness. Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.

Aspen Matis

I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In morning’s somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now it seemed the opposite: a wild act that would define me.

Aspen Matis

But the truth was stranger than an aimless road, it always was.

Aspen Matis

I couldn’t yet piece together the disconnected clues to understand the origin of these lights. To explain away strange magic, I’d convinced myself there was an unseen road cutting across the boundless desert floor like a scar. I imagined its different possible courses. The mystery intrigued me. I couldn’t think of the real destination this road would have been built to lead to, but I accepted I couldn’t see, and I accepted it was there, strange but – from where I stood – a beautiful vision.

Aspen Matis

In the aftermath of destruction, a silence settles – the stillness of fresh loss. People’s cheerful chatter is fainter, the blue color of sky dimmer; now that horror is undeniable and feels inescapable, the value of life seems lessened.

Aspen Matis

The uncertainty wore on him. The conditions in jail--the handcuffs, the noise, the filth, the crowding--mangled his senses. It's likely that, if one must be incarcerated in the United States, a jail in central Maine would be among the more tolerable spots, but to Knight it was torture. "Bedlam" is how he referred to the place. It never got dark in jail; at eleven p.m., the lights merely became a little duller. "I suspect," he noted, "more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods.

Michael Finkel

Still, Luce held firm to the belief that quiet and solitude were good for you, offering peace, or at least hope for peace.

Charles Frazier

You are right; I am not good at moving in society. Be merciful. You do not understand me; I live in the woods by choice--that is my happiness. Here, where I am all alone, it can hurt no one that I am as I am; but when I go among others, I have to use all my will power to be as I should.

Knut Hamsun

There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain,' Knight said.

Michael Finkel

The earth is grounding while the mountains, curvaceous and sweeping, offer a blanket of refuge. Their woods are abounding in camouflage as their leaves sway about in continuous, florid dance. There is an air of invulnerability that is exclusive to the woods, which is why she’s most happy among them. She doesn’t mind beasts as they are preferable to humans and much less threatening; beasts, you see, although dangerous, are incapable of the enmity that permeates beyond the shade of the woods.

Donna Lynn Hope

I spent the day running through the woods like a wild animal. Being chased by you is the only thing that would have made it more romantic.

Amanda Mosher

And so she remained, like everything that mattered to me then, secret—to be pursued in the woods by moonlight, when I was supposed to be studying.

Garth Risk Hallberg

I had feared this end, wondered where I would go from it, from the moment I first stepped on this footpath in the desert. But I found I was not afraid of reaching it now. I was happy. I hadn't found every answer for where I was going, but I now had all I needed to take these next steps. I knew I would do what I needed to become a writer now.

Aspen Matis

I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything," said Jane. "Oh, I can easily understand that," said Anne thoughtfully. "I wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing because, although I love the fields and woods, I love people too...

L.M. Montgomery

For this entire walk, my desire had ashamed me, as if my wanting to be kissed that night mitigated the fault of Junior's sudden deafness. I'd been given stacks of reasons to blame myself for an act of violence committed by another. I had blamed my flirting for his subsequent felony. My college taught me: my rape was my shame. Everyone I'd trusted asked only what I might have done to let it happen. In my gut, I'd always believed I'd caused it.I finally questioned it.

Aspen Matis

Management" of anything as complicated as a woods requires more humility than comes easily to our species, at least in its American incarnation.

Bill McKibben

These woods are where silence has come to lick its wounds.

Samantha Hunt

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships.You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones.

Harlan Coben

I once took a poo in the woods while hunched over like an animal. It was AWESOME.

Drew Barrymore

The children walk away from me, flick flickety off at a tangent between thin blotched beech trunks, then turn like yo-yos at the end of their strings and come back to me" from the poem "In a BishopsWood Clearing

Jay Woodman

grappling with some small understanding of this place, this time, we're in" my poem "In a BishopsWood Clearing

Jay Woodman

So you're lost, uh? Happens a lot out here. You walk around for days, seeing things, losing your bearings, crying out for God, But He can't hear you. You can scream and scream but nobody'll ever hear you.

Craig Davidson

These three children own the summer. They know the wood as surely as they know the micro landscapes of their own grazed knees; put them down blindfolded in any dell or clearing and they could find their way out without putting a foot wrong. This is their territory, and they rule it wild and lordly as young animals; they scramble through its trees and hide-and-seek in its hollows all the endless day long, and all night in their dreams.

Tana French

Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she stepped out onto it, away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could.

Peter S Beagle

Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, “far removed from the seats of strife,” as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago, crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already. But most of the time you don’t think. No point. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile Zen mode, your brain like a balloon tethered with string, accompanying but not actually part of the body below. Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think, “Hey, I did sixteen miles today,” any more than you think, “Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today.” It’s just what you do.

Bill Bryson

You will come to the woods and choose your mate.

Molly Ringle

Everyone knew you shouldn't go biting into fruit offered to you by magical creatures in the woods, even if you'd thought until just five minutes ago that such stories were, you know, only stories.

Molly Ringle

Three scents accompany my memories of this place: cut wood, poppy-seed bread, and the soft, crisp smell of snow.

Elif Shafak

Yes, he knew it was crazy to be this obsessed over an encounter that had taken up maybe sixty seconds of his life. (Or had it been an hour and sixty seconds?) But what an encounter. His fingers still felt the bones and flesh through her sweater, his tongue still tasted her mysterious bitter-greens mouth, her voice still haunted him with that whispered 'Help me.

Molly Ringle

My breathe would catch at the sight of violets-so common in the woods at home, so surprising in the mountains. The violet's message was "Keep up your courage, stay true to what you believe in." p264

Jessica Stern

We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self.These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even the stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and streams, and springs,—the mountains, woods and perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home of love; filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes, and gathered sheaves; and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt, like Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, though false, are beautiful, and have for many ages and in countless ways, enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught that all these things are true and all inspired of God, and that eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man.

Robert G. Ingersoll

The trees show definitions of themselves subtly like the face of a man.

Daniel J. Rice

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