Swampland Quotes

“It was one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled, dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you. It went with the noiselessness of late night, and only the crickets chirping, the frogs sobbing off in the moist swampland. One of those things in a big jar that makes your stomach jump as it does when you see a preserved arm in a laboratory vat.”
― Ray Bradbury, The October Country

“Well, are you just going to sit there with your mouths gaping-open or are you able to speak? Why didn’t you announce yourselves prior to crashing ashore, the Fairy Queen scolded.
How-Ya-Do’s eyes were even larger than usual as he cowered on Cricket’s shoulder; the both of them speechless, shocked into silence, and Face-to-Face with Magic itself!
You scared the spark right out of us, well speak-up for goodness sake before I sic’ The Hummers onto you both, she warned while pointing to the massive army of bees.”
― Darwun St James, CRICKET

“Likewise, when she sometimes found arrows stuck in the roots of trees, she quietly unscrewed the shafts and used them to stake plants in the poison garden, where Herself grew hemlock, tall thimbleweed, white snakeroot, swamp milkweed, poison sumac, and bloodroot. Poison ivy with its white berries was ubiquitous on the island and didn't need any special place.
This morning the island was alive with flowery and moldy fragrances, alive with the urgent trills and chirps of birdsong, while more quietly, down low, sounds of scurrying and munching. The island was bursting with spring things to count and measure and eat--- ramps and wild onion sprouts, three-leaved trillium and speckled trout lily, dandelions, horse tails, tender new nettles for tea, pokeweed shoots to boil, fiddlehead ferns to fry.”
― Bonnie Jo Campbell, The Waters