Jewels-PiXie Johnson

“What might commend so drab a creature to your sight, when overhead the low clouds split, and the upturned bowl of a silver moon pours milk out on the river?”
― Sarah Perry, Melmoth

“But the earth and its beings are extravagantly wild, full of unexpected wonders. It is time to turn from our textbooks and listen to the birds themselves.”
― Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Mozart's Starling

“No silver seagrass or salt pans, no soldier crabs or sea tides to read, no seaweed necklaces to wear, and no skies filled with ghostly wisps of virga, warning of storms out at sea.
On either side of the flat highway the land was thirsty, dry as a cracked tongue. Somehow, though, the strange landscape teemed with life. It hummed in Alice's ears, the clicking buzz of cicadas, the occasional wild cackle of kookaburras. There was the occasional blur of color where wildflowers grew at the base of gum trees. Some had trunks as white as fairytale snow while others we're an ochre color, as glossy as if covered in a slick of wet paint.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“I love the wild things, and the birds most of all. My education began, I am sure, the moment I was pushed free of the womb by Mother, born on Prade Ranch in the back bedroom on a late afternoon in early March-the seventh of March which is when the golden-cheeked warblers usually return to Prade Ranch after wintering down in Mexico. There would have been doves calling, as if to counter Mother's gasps and cries, and the flylike buzz of the hummingbirds (the aggressive black-chinned ones making most of the racket) at the nectar feeders just outside the open window. There would have been a breeze stirring the lace curtains. Father in the room with the doctor, and Grandfather and Chubb on the back porch, waiting for this next new part of the world to begin. Grandfather said he knew that was going to be the day, not just because of the golden-cheeked warblers' return, but because he'd heard a vermilion flycatcher buzzing-pit-zee,pit-zee-all the day before, and on into the night, well past midnight-the only time he's ever heard of that, before or since.”
― Rick Bass