Excerpts

No art is truly teachable

“No art is truly teachable in its essence. All the knowledge in the world of its techniques can provide in itself no more than imitations or replicas of previous art. What is irreplaceable in any object of art is never, in the final analysis, its technique or craft, but the personality of the artists, the expression of his or her unique and individual feeling.”

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The 20th Century

“[The 20th Century] is in fact the first to show some sort of general and international concern [for nature]; and I do not think we should be too self-congratulatory about that. The future may well judge that we had both the scientific awareness and the political organization, the potential, to do much more than we have done.”

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What I gain most from nature

“What I gain most from nature is beyond words.”

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My father’s refusal to be moved

“[My father's] refusal to be moved by what moved me in nature was perhaps largely a product of his own conditioning; but its function (without my realizing it, of course) was very similar to what pruning does for young fruit trees—that is, to direct their growth and determine their future.”

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The real threat

“The real threat to us in the coming millennium lies… in our growing emotional and intellectual detachment from [nature].”

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The most harmful change

“The most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge…. We shall never fully understand nature (or ourselves), and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability—however innocent ad harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.”

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In order to protect nature

“In order to protect nature we’ve turned it into a consumer item.”

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Older and less planned quarters of cities

“Older and less planned quarters of cities and towns are profoundly woodlike, and especially in this matter of the mode of their passage through us, the way they unreel, disorientate, open, close, surprise, please.”

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The modern version of hell

“The modern version of hell is purposelessness.”

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Art and nature are siblings

“Art and nature are siblings, branches of the one tree; and nowhere more than in the continuing inexplicability of many of their processes, and above all those of creation and of effect on their respective audiences.”

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That I should have differed so much from my father

“That I should have differed so much from my father… seems to me in retrospect not in the least a matter for Oedipal guilt, but a healthy natural process, just as the branches of a healthy tree do not try to occupy one another’s territory.”

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I do not plan my fiction

“I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry.”

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It is not necessarily too little knowledge

“It is not necessarily too little knowledge that causes ignorance; possessing too much, or wanting to gain too much, can produce the same result.”

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Children are notoriously blind

“Children are notoriously blind towards their parents, and nowhere more than in failing to see the childlike in them—the inescapable conditioning of the past.”

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Good philosophers prune

“Good philosophers prune the chaos of reality and train it into fixed shapes, thereby forcing it to yield valuable and delicious fruit—or at least in theory.”

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The attraction of the forest setting

“The attraction of the forest setting to the early pioneers of fiction was in no way an attraction to the forest itself. It was clearly evil; but being evil, gave convenient excuse for the legitimate portrayal of all its real of supposed dangers to the traveller. The church might complain about the eagerness with which the educated public throughout Europe took to these tree-tales of adultery, magic, mystery, monsters, eternal danger and eternal temptation. But it could hardly deny the general truth of a proposition it was itself increasingly determined to maintain: the inherent wickedness of godless nature, in outer reality as in man himself. Raymond Chandler and the other creators of our own century’s private eye have used exactly the same technique, substituting evil city for evil trees and then giving themselves a comprehensive licence, behind the pretext of an incorruptible hero, to describe all the vices, horrors and seductions from the straight path whose gauntlet he has to run in order to earn the adjective. Sir Galahad and Philip Marlow are blood brothers.”

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Woods have never seemed to me to be static things

“Woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me—as do words on the page and the scenes they evoke, when read.”

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I have dabbled in many branches

“I have dabbled in many branches of natural (and human) history, and have a sound knowledge of none; and the same goes for countless other things besides. I like a kind of wandering wood acquaintance, and no more; a dilettante’s, not a virtuoso’s; always the green chaos rather than the printed map.”

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