658 Quotes by Rebecca Solnit

Some music has words, and rock had words that at times aspired to poetry, but the words were always sounds first, spoken to the body before the mind.

The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end.

Women’s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful.

Only when the honey turns to dust are you free.

I’ve been gratified to see over the twenty or so years of my writing life the West become less of a colony of the East; maybe new technologies and too much travel undermine the idea of provinciality.

Something wonderful happens to you and you instantly look back over your life and see it as a series of fortunate events stretching off into the distance like mountain peaks. Something terrible happens and your life has always been a litany of woe. The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn’t a story; it’s a whole Milky Way of events and we are forever picking out constellations from it to fit who and where we are.

Perhaps walking is best imagined as an ‘indicator species,’ to use an ecologist’s term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.

Many events plant seeds, imperceptible at the time, that bear fruit long afterward.

Who drinks your tears, who has your wings, who hears your story?