Emily Williams

“Maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood a kind of flesh. And perhaps instruments of wooden construction sound so pleasing to our ears for this reason: the choral shimmer of a guitar; the heartbeat thump of drums; the mournful wail of violins--we love them because they sound like us.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“If it's true that the United States was born of slavery and revolutionary justice...then surely her own country was born of a cruel, grasping indifference to its indigenous peoples and the natural world. We who rip our the Earth's most irreplaceable resources, sell them cheaply to anyone with a nickel in their pocket, then wake up and do it all over again--that could well serve as the Greenwood motto, and perhaps even for her nation itself.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“...why is it, she wonders...that we expect our children to be the ones to halt deforestation and species extinction and to rescue our planet tomorrow, when we are the ones overseeing its destruction today?”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“This is the carpenter's painful truth: that nothing is true.
By true, he means level, plumb, perfect. Every room you've ever entered has been off by at least a sixteenth of an inch -- more probably an eighth. Guaranteed. We think we live in boxes until we look closer and find we're in fact living in irregular shapes, in big, misshapen accidents.
Which makes carpenters the high priests of living with mistakes. And while sloppiness is the most grievous insult you could throw at another carpenter, true perfection is maddeningly unattainable, which is why it's never spoken of. Because even after you cut a piece of wood and lay it straight, it lives on after you've finished, soaking up moisture, twisting, bowing, and warping into unintended forms. Our lives are no different.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood