The Library Writer

“Stepping out into the world, into the grass, onto the path, was always a kind of relief. I was not escaping anything. I was returning to the arena of delight.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

“Have you ever thought about the word 'hayseed?' a writer friend asked me one day, as we walked through waist-high pastures. What an amazing metaphor. Out of the entire English language, someone chose that word as an insult, but it has poetic double meaning. What are the odds? ...

What a tiny dream a hayseed is! What an outrageous assertion, that a seed could ever amount to anything more than just a single blade of grass. And yet, raveled into that tiny husk is everything our farm has ever needed, or will ever need in the future.”
― Forrest Pritchard, Gaining Ground: A Story Of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, And Saving The Family Farm

“If this was lost, let us all be lost always.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

“We are, I guess, all of us, built out of stories.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District