Blair

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Blair.


Loading...
John Green
“Here's the plain truth, at least as it has been shown to me: We are never far from wonders. I remember when my son was about two, we were walking in the woods one November morning. We were along a ridge, looking down at a forest in the valley below, where a cold haze seemed to hug the forest floor. I kept trying to get my oblivious two-year-old to appreciate the landscape. At one point, I picked him up and pointed out toward the horizon and said, "Look at that, Henry, just look at it!" And he said, "Weaf!" I said, "What?" And again he said, "Weaf," and then reached out and grabbed a single brown oak leaf from the little tree next to us.

I wanted to explain to him that you can see a brown oak leaf anywhere in the eastern United States in November, that nothing in the forest was less interesting. But after watching him look at it, I began to look as well, and I soon realized it wasn't just a brown leaf. Its veins spidered out red and orange and yellow in a pattern too complex for my brain to synthesize, and the more I looked at that leaf with Henry, the more I was compelled into an aesthetic contemplation I neither understood nor desired, face-to-face with something commensurate to my capacity for wonder.

Marveling at the perfection of that leaf, I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease. It is our attentiveness that is in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires.”
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

John Green
“It's no wonder we worry about the end of the world. Worlds end all the time.”
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

Marissa Meyer
“The Jabberwock was a creature of nightmares and myth, of tales told by firelight to frighten little children into good behavior. It was a monster said to live amid the twining and tangled Tulgey Wood, far away in the country of Chess.”
Marissa Meyer, Heartless

John Green
“At the end of his life, the great picture book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak said on the NPR show Fresh Air, 'I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can't stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.'

He said, 'I'm finding out as I'm aging that I'm in love with the world.'

It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I've started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn't to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from the feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

John Green
“What an astonishment to breathe on this breathing planet. What a blessing to be Earth loving Earth.”
John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

25x33 Smith ELA 2017 — 62 members — last activity Aug 22, 2017 03:56PM
Come, share books, write reviews, get excited, read more books, sleep.
25x33 ELA 8B AB Block MCKINNON — 23 members — last activity Aug 15, 2018 05:59PM
A book sharing group for Ms McKinnon's AB Block ...more
year in books
Tania
1,798 books | 32 friends

Jamie
687 books | 31 friends

Kirsten
428 books | 33 friends

Kylie S...
147 books | 4 friends

Lori
8 books | 14 friends

Cristia...
38 books | 2 friends

Ms McKi...
517 books | 593 friends

Marie S...
267 books | 14 friends

More friends…

Favorite Genres



Polls voted on by Blair

Lists liked by Blair