Local Wonders Quotes

“I now know that I was in the presence of the only angels we are ever likely to make the acquaintance of: teachers blessed with the love of small people who are trying to find their place in the world.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“I hunted when I was younger, but after I moved to the country, I swore of making loud noises except in the case of emergencies. When a gun goes off, it alters everything in the immediate vicinity, and this effect lasts for a good half hour. Every sparrow, every field mouse, every spider in its web freezes in place. Shooting guns and setting off Fourth of July firecrackers are far too much of an imposition on the natural world. None of our fellow creatures has evolved far enough to accept guns or loud noises as part of the order of things. These days I only use my shotgun for occasional tree trimming.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“The Czechs say, "The longest journey is from the mother to the door." At the end of his childhood, a young man breaks from the hard tears of his family and follows his own way. Wherever he goes, he carries their name. After three or four generations, all of the brothers and sisters have scattered, and the sons of the brothers and sisters, and the sons of the brothers’ and sisters’ sons, each following the shimmering tracks of his own fortune. And the years fly by, click clack click clack/”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“Writers are writers because they love to read. If I were to read two or three books every week, I couldn't live long enough to read through the books I owned, but that doesn't keep me from buying more.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“A good metaphor is like that; it changes the way you look at the world.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“Arnold died in his fifties of a heart attack. My family would have used the term "massive heart attack." I never heard a heart attack described in any other way.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“A library is like an airport; if you wait long enough, everybody in the world will walk past.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“We are always trying to find footing on the damp edge of the future, but to most of us, the dry sand of the past feels firmer under our sneakers.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“Our word gossamer comes from the Middle English gossomer, or "Goose Summer," which is that time of the year when spiders build their nests in the grass and strands of spun silk are plucked up by the wind to sing in the light like mandolin strings.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“In nearly every little town, there is a man or woman who paints pictures of dogs and horses and pots of daisies, and that person is almost always spoken of with pride.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“The sky is like old blue denim just before dawn, with one round hole worn through, exposing the cold bony knee of the moon. I have been hearing the trilling of tree frogs. That a frog - even one with the chirp of a bird - would live in a tree (not even in but on), clinging with little suction cups to keep from falling, is the height of craziness, but forty feet in the air, light as leaves, their tiny hearts are slow and steady under kite paper skin, and their black eyes shine with moonlight. Let us praise all who ascend to such high places on the sheer face of the world.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“Like that one great aunt in every family who takes it upon herself to remember the birthdays of every member, this old lilac has set about to chronicle the history of this farmstead.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“And the heavy perfume of the wild plum in blossom, drifting through an open window to braid itself softly about us, all wildness itself — how it carries us back even further, to a time before history, to a place through which we grope our way, longing for something we cannot quite define, waving a peeled and painted wand with a packet of tobacco tied to its end. Oh, dear fragrance on the swollen river of spring, sweet wistfulness turning and turning on the speeding black current.”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps

“The past few weeks, I've been seeing coyote hunters during the day with their jeeps and pickups parked by the road, talking into walkie-talkies, dead-serious looks on their faces. In their camouflage clothes, they look like members of a SWAT team about to break into a methamphetamine lab. They must imagine that there's some danger. Are the coyotes armed and dangerous?”
― Ted Kooser, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps