Sharon

“Bolton is part naturalist, part social worker, part mythmaker. It's a job description that didn't used to exist because it didn't need to. We once had a familiar relationship with nature; we knew it on a first-name basis. But now we need professionals to help us reacquaint ourselves with the woods. (p.159)”
― Florence Williams, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative

“I find the intellectual compulsion to break apart the pieces of nature and examine them one by one both interesting and troubling. I understand it's the way science typically works: to understand a system, you have to understand the parts, find the mechanism, put your flag on a piece of new ground. The poets would find this is nonsense. It's not just the smell of a cypress, or the sound of the birds, or the color green that unlocks the pathway to health in our brains. We're full sensory beings, or at least we were once built to be. Isn't it possible that it's only when you open all the doors - literally and figuratively - that the real magic happens? (p. 127)”
― Florence Williams, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative

“Nature appears to act directly upon our autonomic systems, calming us, but it also works indirectly, through facilitating social contact and through encouraging exercise and physical movement. (p,166)”
― Florence Williams, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative

“Life is the story you tell yourself. But how you tell that story—are you a hero, victim, lover, warrior, caretaker, believer—matters a great deal. How you adapt that story—how you revise, rethink, and rewrite your personal narrative as things change, lurch, or go wrong in your life—matters even more.”
― Bruce Feiler, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age