161 Quotes by Annie Proulx

As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped. After.

You know, the Chinese have forgotten more about sailing than the rest of the world ever knew.

The old forests are going and once they are gone we will have to wait a thousand years or more to see their like. Though nothing will be allowed such a generous measure of time to grow.

That world he wanted them to know had vanished as smoke deserts the dying embers that made it.

In this life we meet difficult people. We must take the time to listen and try to understand them.

The forest had many edges, like a lace altarpiece.

They say that doing ten sums a day prevents you from becoming senile. But by that argument bankers should be geniuses. That’s not right. Thickest heads in the world.

What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, ‘Write what you know.’ It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don’t develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

The idea of the North was taking him. He needed something to brace against.