14 Quotes by James Rebanks

I have seen the tourism market shift over the last ten years with greater value attached to the culture of places, seen people growing sick of plastic phoniness and genuinely wanting to experience places and people that do different things. I see how bored we have grown of ourselves in the modern Western world and how people can fight back and shape their futures using their history as an advantage not an obligation.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.

There is something about planting trees that feels good. If you have done it well, it will outlast you and leave the world a little richer and more beautiful because of your efforts. Planting a tree means you believe in, and care about, a world that will be there after you are gone. It means you have thought about more than yourself, and that you can imagine a future beyond your own lifespan, and you care about that future.

We don't give up, even when things are bad.We pay our debts.We work hard.We act decently.We help our neighbours if they need it.We do what we say we will do.We don't want much attention.We look after our own.We are proud of what we do.We try to be quietly smart.We take chances sometimes to get on.We will fail sometimes.We will be affected by the wider world...But we hold on to who we are.

She didn't really understand our world [and] lived with the unquestioning belief that these things were foolishness and fancies, the rubbish of now. So she taught us good rules that no longer made sense.

Later mum had a fridge magnet that said 'Dull women have immaculate homes

It feels strange to be home, as if I am now just a visitor to the land that I love, no longer really a part of it. I understand for the first time that our sense of belonging is all about participation. We belong because we are part of the work of this place.

Later I would understand that modern industrial communities are obsessed with the importance of ‘going somewhere’ and ‘doing something with your life’. The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesn’t count for much.

When we call it ‘our’ landscape, we mean it as a physical and intellectual reality. There is nothing chosen about it. This landscape is our home and we rarely stray far from it, or endure anywhere else for long before returning. This may seem like a lack of imagination or adventure, but I don’t care. I love this place; for me it is the beginning and the end of everything, and everywhere else feels like nowhere.