Emily Carr > Quotes

“If you're going to lick the icing off somebody else's cake you won't be nourished and it won't do you any good, or you might find the cake had caraway seeds and you hate them.”
― Emily Carr

“What do these forests make you feel? Their weight and density, their crowded orderliness. There is scarcely room for another tree and yet there is space around each. They are profoundly solemn yet upliftingly joyous; like the Bible, you can find strength in them that you look for. How absolutely full of truth they are, how full of reality. The juice and essence of life are in them; they teem with life, growth and expansion. They are a refuge for myriads of living things. As the breezes blow among them, they quiver, yet how still they stand developing with the universe. God is among them. He has breathed with them the breath of life, might and patience. They stand developing, springing from tiny seeds, pushing close to Mother Earth. Fluffy baby things first, sheltering beneath their parents, mounting higher, spreading brave braches, pushing with mighty strength not to be denied skywards. Tossing in the breezes, glowing in the sunshine, bathing in the showers, bending below the snow piled on their branches, drinking the dew, rejoicing in creation, bracing each other, sheltering the birds and beasts, the myriad insects.”
― Emily Carr, Opposite Contraries: The Unknown Journals of Emily Carr and Other Writings

“I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.”
― Emily Carr

“Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. the earth welcomes the body-coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption.”
― Emily Carr, Klee Wyck

“The forest was almost like a garden - no brambles, no thorns, nothing to stumble over, no rotten stumps, no fallen branches, all mellow to look at, melodious to hear, every kind of bird, all singing, no awed hush, no vast echoes, just beautiful, smiling woods, not solemn, solemn, solemn like our forests. This exquisite, enchanting gentleness was perfect for one day, but not for always - we were Canadians.”
― Emily Carr, Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr

“Who of us knows just why we do what we do, much less another's whys, or what we're after? Art is not like that; cut and dried and hit-at like a bull's eye and done for a reason and explained away by this or that motive. It's climbing and striving for something always beyond.”
― Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr

“Down deep we all hug something. The great forest hugs its silence. The sea and the air hug the spilled cries of sea-birds. The forest hugs only silence; its birds and even its beasts are mute. It must have hurt the Indians dreadfully to have the things they had always believed trampled on and torn from their hugging.”
― Emily Carr, Klee Wyck

“Vancouver city was more beautiful to look at across the water than to be in.”
― Emily Carr, Klee Wyck

“It is hard to remember just when you first became aware of being alive. It is like looking through rain onto a bald, new lawn; as you watch, the brown is all pricked with pale green. You did not see the points pierce, did not hear the stab - there they are!”
― Emily Carr, The Book of Small

“Punk!”

Slowly the tired eyes turned from watching the street corner and looked at me without interest.

“He will follow no one but his master,” said the woman.

The dog suffered my hand on his collar; he rose and shambled disheartenedly at my side, carrying the only luggage he possessed – his name and a broken heart.”
― Emily Carr

“More than ever was I convinced that the old way of seeing was inadequate to express this big country of ours, her depth, her height, her unbounded wildness, silences too strong to be broken - nor could ten million cameras, through their mechanical boxes, ever show real Canada. It had to be sensed, passed through live minds, sensed and loved.”
― Emily Carr, Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr

“For one moment the morning took you far out into vague chill, but your body snatched you back into its cosiness, back to the waiting dogs on the hill top. They could not follow out there, their world was walled, their noses trailed the earth. What a dog cannot hear or smell he distrusts; unless objects are close or move he does not observe them. His nature is to confirm what he sees by his sense of sound or of smell.”
― Emily Carr, Emily Carr and Her Dogs: Flirt, Punk, and Loo

“In the early morning the dogs burst from their sleeping quarters to bunch by the garden gate, panting for a race across Beacon Hill Park. Springs that wound themselves tighter and tighter in their bodies all night would loose with a whir on the opening of the garden gate. Ravenous for liberty, the dogs tore across the ball grounds at the base of Beacon Hill, slackened their speed to tag each other, wheeled back, waiting to climb the hill with me.”
― Emily Carr, Emily Carr and Her Dogs: Flirt, Punk, and Loo

“Why must these people go on, and on, copying, copying fragments of old relics from extinct churches, and old tombs as though those were the best that could ever be, and it would be a sacrilege to beat them? Why didn't they want to out-do the best, instead of copying, always copying what had been done?”
― Emily Carr, Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr

“Where be I? – Mercy! I came for a pup! That’s where I be. ‘Usband says when we was changin’ shifts walkin’ son last night. ‘Try a pup, Mother’ ‘e sez- ‘We’ve tried rattles an’ bells an’ tyos. Try a live pup to soothe ‘is frettiness.’ So I come. ‘Usband sez, ‘Git a pup same age as son’ – Sooner ‘ave one ‘ouse-broke me’self – wot yer got?”
“I have pups three months old”
‘Ezzact same age as son! Bring ‘em along.”
She inspected the puppy, running an experienced finger round her gums.
“Toothed a’ready! ‘E’ll do.”
She tucked the pup into the pram beside the baby who immediately seized the dog’s ear and began to chew. The pup as immediately applied himself greedily to the baby’s bottle and began to suck.”
― Emily Carr, Emily Carr and Her Dogs : Flirt, Punk and Loo

“It is wonderful to feel the grand ness of Canada in the raw.”
― Emily Carr

“The old man sawed as if aeons of time were before him, and as if all the years behind him had been leisurely and all the years in front of him would be equally so. Life had sweetened the old man. He was luscious with time like the end berries of the strawberry season.”
― Emily Carr, Klee Wyck

“Professor, you are very hard on that young Canadian girl!"
"Hard?" The Professor shrugged, spread his palms. "Art - the girl has 'makings.' It takes red-hot fury to dig 'em up. If I'm harsh it's for her own good. More often than not worth while things hurt. Art's worth while.”
― Emily Carr, Growing Pains: The Autobiography of Emily Carr

“Bobtails,” murmured the butcher caressingly – “Bobtails is good dogs!... ‘Member the little ‘un I bought from your kennel a year back?”

“I do. Hope she turned out well – good worker?

“Good worker! You bet. More sick nurse than cattle driver. Our Min’s fine! Y’see, Missus be bed-fast. Market days she’d lay there, sunup to sundown, alone. I got Min; then she wasn’t alone no more; Min told hold. Market days Min guards sheep from cougars, Min shoos coon from hen-house – Min, Min, Min. Min runs the whole works, Min do!”
― Emily Carr, Emily Carr and Her Dogs: Flirt, Punk, and Loo

“It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw.”
― Emily Carr