Of Time and Turtles Quotes

“The rhythmic songs of crickets and grey tree frogs sound to me like little clocks. But instead of ticking time away-time going, going, gone-they seem to be accumulating time, season after season of mystery, wisdom, and wonder. With each trill and chirp and throb, these voices are keeping turtle time, renewing the covenants that keep the world alive, and offering us the gift of eternity.”
― Sy Montgomery, Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell

“Never give up on a turtle. Because turtles never give up.”
― Sy Montgomery, Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell

“If people had more understanding of geologic time, we’d be less selfish and greedy, and think about the future.” It almost seems as if Cris is living in a different time-world than the rest of us. The rest of us humans, that is. At the moment of the world’s most urgent extinction crises, he radiates calm. Amid a culture of hurry and hunger, he remains contented. He holds, at once, the in-the-moment present and the far-off future, and faces them both with composed persistence. He is living in turtle time. Turtle people are not your ordinary, run-of-the mill humans. Matt and I are staying at the TSA’s intern guesthouse, an immaculate mobile home on a site where the former occupant raised rats for a living (and whose trailer was eventually relocated”
― Sy Montgomery, Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell

“understanding of geologic time, we’d be less selfish and greedy, and think about the future.”
― Sy Montgomery, Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell

“But one might hope that both animals, if allowed to naturally attain the end of their vastly different life spans, may experience a full measure of life....."Everybody in their bones knows that something is eternal," the Stage Manager tells the audience. The dead are at peace, knowing that at the end of their waiting, the eternal part of their selves, like a turtle in the spring, will emerge.”
― Sy Montgomery, Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell