Barkskins Quotes

“The old forests are going and once they are gone we will have to wait a thousand years or more to see their like. Though nothing will be allowed such a generous measure of time to grow.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“All must pay the debt of nature.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“In every life there are events that reshape one's sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“The forest had many edges, like a lace altarpiece.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Nothing in the natural world, no forest, no river, no insect nor leaf has any intrinsic value to men. All is worthless, utterly dispensable unless we discover some benefit to ourselves in it—even the most ardent forest lover thinks this way. Men behave as overlords. They decide what will flourish and what will die. I believe that humankind is evolving into a terrible new species and I am sorry that I am one of them.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Their faces were scarified in hideous whorls and dots. As for clothing, they dressed in vegetable matter. Another”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“He is one of those who cannot be other than lonely. He was born to it.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“And remember that where there are highlands, there are lowlands with bogs and marshes-they are not discrete.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“The thing American people fear about corporations is that they might achieve too much power. We have an antipathy to power even as we admire it.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. Lynn White, Jr.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“That world he wanted them to know had vanished as smoke deserts the dying embers that made it.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“...They were very good observers of water, weather, all animals and growing things...”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped. After”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“He put away his identification as Mi’kmaq and became a hybrid person.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“It was the idea of abandonment she dreaded. All her life she had been afraid of being left alone while everyone around her vanished.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Duke & Sons, perpetual outsiders, had never gotten involved in politics. If the younger men had not been forced by Bernard’s death to assume junior positions in the company they might have moved into rich political offices. It would have been useful to have a Duke as the governor of Massachusetts or Maine or even New York. Now that England had New France entirely within her claws everything was very different”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“...the air has been filled with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, with exhaust particles and smoke. We have acid rain. The deep forest are gone now the climate shifts. Can you figure out for yourself that the old medicine plants grew in a different world?...”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“It is not my place to like or dislike, I shall get along...”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“...They accept the natural order of the world. And although they choke in the fumes of the city they do not make a connection with the purer air in the forest...”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“In this life we meet difficult people. We must take the time to listen and try to understand them.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together. George”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“But,” she said sadly, “I could not become an Indian.” “Of course not,” said Dr. Mukhtar. “There is a whole world of signs, symbols and spirits which all must be absorbed from birth. You could not hope to grasp the meanings except by living the entire life.” She could not, she explained to Dr. Mukhtar, express affection except by teaching, holding out books as tokens of love. When at last light the doctor, exhausted from listening, stood to go to his room above for the night and pinched out the candle, she begged him to leave the curtains and the window open. The door closed gently and she could look at the moon, a blood-streaked egg yolk rolling in the shell of sky. •”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Abruptly the clouds began to rip open like rotten cloth, showing bright blue underskirts. As a slice of sunlight painted the drenched countryside, touched the sea, a flight of migrating birds cut the sky like crazy little scissors.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Look! See there!” cried Captain Verdwijnen gesturing at the water-riding phosphor and waving his hands. Alongside the ship the bodies of dolphins trailed sparks that twisted and writhed as the fish moved. A sailor hauled up a bucket of quivering light. Captain Verdwijnen plunged his hands into it and held them up, his fingers and palms glowing as the water dripped away. The crests of the waves caught fire, darkened. The ship seemed to be sailing through a burning sea. Duquet yawned, said “remarkable,” and returned to his blanket. •”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“The moon was a slice of white radish, the shadows of incomparable blackness. The shapes of trees fell sharply on the snow, of blackness so profound they seemed gashes into the underworld. The days were short and the setting sun was snarled in rags of flying storm cloud. The snow turned lurid, hurling away like cast blood.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“Captain James Duke, in his early fifties, was complicated, dark-haired, and somewhat handsome. He took a hard-headed and hard-handed stance to disguise an inner recognition of worthlessness. Quixotic, he swung from morbid self-pity to rigid authority over his crews and himself. The future flickered before him as a likely series of disappointments.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“One thing about this group, thought Felix, they really like talking about trees.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“From the bed Beatrix looked at the sky and saw a thin cloud like a ribbon of spilled cream on blue satin.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“...or better still leave the trees in place. Tree roots hold down the soil. The branches shade the soil and protect it from heavy rain washouts.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins

“The world swarmed with terrible problems but they were not her affair.”
― Annie Proulx, Barkskins