Matt Bear-Fowler

“To be silenced is not the same as to be silent; to go unheard is not the same as to be speechless. No landscape speaks with a single tongue.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Water flows in and through us. Running, we are rivers. Seated, we are pools. Our brains and hearts are three-quarters water, our skin is two-thirds water; even our bones are watery. We were swimmers before we were walkers, slow-turning like breath-divers in the dark flotation tank of the womb.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“If fungi were to speak,’ says Giuliana, ‘they would tell us what they show us, which is that really the death of an organism is the beginning of countless others; that there is no end to life, just a constantly shifting substrate.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?

“Grammar’ is that which orders the relations between things. The word sounds dry, but it hides great power within itself: in Middle English, ‘grammar’ also meant ‘magic’ – a ‘gramarye’ was a book of spells or sorcery. A good grammar of animacy can still re-enchant existence. To imagine that a river is alive causes water to glitter differently. New possibilities of encounter emerge – and loneliness retreats a step or two. You find yourself falling in love outward, to use Robinson Jeffers’s beautiful phrase.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive?