Sue

“We turn tough and get sentimental; we laugh as we cry; our life’s a waking slumber, a slumberous wake; we quarrel with our arms around each other; we lash out at each other while shrugging our shoulders; no part of our bodies or minds remains intact; we breathe as long as we live, and live merely because we are breathing, as long as it lasts.”
― Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine

“To me, he was still a hero; he gave me fencing lessons, sharpened my pocketknife, taught me how to draw clouds by rubbing an eraser over shapes sketched with a piece of charred wood from the fireplace, and how to render the myriad leaves of a tree without drawing each one separately—the true secret of art, as he called it.”
― Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine

“The truth in life often lies buried in places we do not associate with authenticity. Life is more subtle, in this respect, than linear human morality. It goes to work like a painter-copyist, using illusion to depict the truth.”
― Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine

“A common misconception is that rewilding seeks to return land to an idealised previous ecological state. In reality it would never be possible to go back in time to some arbitrarily chosen baseline - and it would be arbitrary, because healthy living systems are always changing naturally over time, even if that's often difficult for us to perceive. The real objective is not to go back to the past, but forward: to complex, vibrant ecosystems that actually work by themselves, and are therefore more resilient in the face of climate breakdown and other shocks coming down the line. As has been said before, the aim of rewilding isn't to turn the ecological clock back in time, but to allow it to actually start ticking again.”
― Eoghan Daltun, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding