Into the Forest Quotes

“This body is yours. No one can ever take it from you, if only you will accept yourself, claim it again--your arms, your spine, your ribs, the small of your back. It's all yours. All this bounty, all this beauty, all this strength and grace is yours. This garden is yours. Take it back. Take it back.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“I never knew how much we consumed. It seems as if we are all appetite, as if a human being is simply a bundle of needs to drain the world. It's no wonder there are wars, no wonder the earth and water and air are polluted. It's no wonder the economy collapsed, if Eva and I use so much merely to stay alive.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“But whether I touch him or I run, whether I'm dreaming or I'm awake, on his birthday or on all other days, my whole life has been contaminated with the fact that he is dead.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Still, there's a lucidity that sometimes comes in that moment when you find yourself looking at the world through your tears, as if those tears served as a lens to clarify what it is you're looking at.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“So my sister dances and the dead house burns, and I scrawl these few last words by the light of its burning. I know I should toss this story, too, on those flames. But I am still too much a storyteller -or at least a storykeeper-still too much my father's daughter to burn these pages.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“I’m just a core, a kernel, a coal tucked in a bit of breathing flesh, listening to the rain. My life fills this place, no longer meager, no longer lost or stolen or waiting to begin. I drink rain and it quenches an ancient thirst.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“It’s a physical urge, stronger than thirst or sex. Halfway back on the left side of my head there is a spot that longs for the jolt of a bullet, that yearns for that fire, that final empty rip. I want to be let out of this cavern, to open myself up to the ease of not-living. I am tired of sorrow and struggle and worry. I am tired of my sad sister. I want to turn out the last light.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“We heard the United States had a new president, that she was arranging for a loan from the Commonwealth to bail us out. We heard the White House was burning and the National Guard was fighting the Secret Service in the streets of DC. We heard there was no water left in Los Angeles, that hordes of people were trying to walk north through the drought-ridden Central Valley. We heard that the county to the east of us still had electricity and that the Third World was rallying to send us support. And then we heard that China and Russia were at war and the US had been forgotten.

Although the Fundamentalists' predictions of Armageddon grew more intense, and everyone else complained with increasing bitterness about everything from the last of chewing gum to the closure of Redwood General Hospital, still, among most people there was an odd sense of buoyancy, a sort of surreptitious relief, the same feeling Eva and I used to have every few years when the river that flows through Redwood flooded, washing out roads and closing businesses for a day or two. We knew a flood was inconvenient and destructive At the same time we couldn't help but feel a peculiar sort of delight that something beyond us was large enough to destroy the inexorability of our routines.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Our parents never structured our studies. "Let 'em learn what they like," my father used to say. "A child will eat a well-balanced diet if she's given a choice of wholesome foods and left alone. If a kid's body knows what it needs to grow and stay healthy, why wouldn't her mind, too?"

To his friends he explained, "My girls have free run of the forest and public library. They have a mother who is around to fix them lunch and define any words don't know. School would only get in the way of that. Besides, if they went to school, they'd spend over two hours a day in the car. Lord knows I could use the company on those drives, but it's better for my kids to stay in the woods."

So while other children were reciting their times tables and asking permission to get drinks of water, Eva and I were free to roam and learn as we pleased. Together we painted murals and made up plays, built forts, raised butterflies, and designed computer games. We made paper, concocted new recipes for cookies, edited newsletters, and caught minnows. We grew gourds and nursed fledglings and played with prisms, and our parents told the state that what we did was school.

For years I studied what I wanted to, when and how I wanted to study it. One book led to another in a random pattern, meandering from interest to interest like a good conversation, and the only thing that connected them was their juxtaposition on the bookshelves in mother's workroom.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Instinct is older than paper, wilder than words.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“I get so scared, I can’t stop it. It’s like black waves, and I’m a little cork. I bob to the surface and think I’ll do okay, and then another wave comes and I’m drowning again.” I”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“I never knew how much we consumed. It seems as if we are all appetite, as if a human being is simply a bundle of needs to drain the world. It’s no wonder there are wars, no wonder the earth and water and air are polluted. It’s no wonder the economy collapsed, if Eva and I use so much merely to stay alive.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Maybe it’s true that the people who live through the times that become history’s pivotal points are those least likely to understand them. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln himself could have answered the inevitable test questions about the causes of the Civil War.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“These days our bodies carry our sorrows as though they were bowls brimming with water.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Une fois de plus, ma soeur m'a empêchée d'aller où je voulais.”
― Jean Hegland, Dans la forêt

“Pourtant, il y a une lucidité qui nous vient parfois dans ces moments-là, quand on se surprend à regarder le monde à travers ses larmes, comme si elles servaient de lentilles pour rendre plus net ce que l’on regarde.”
― Jean Hegland, Dans la forêt

“Still, there’s a lucidity that sometimes comes in that moment when you find yourself looking at the world through your tears, as if those tears served as a lens to clarify what it is you’re looking at.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“But I caught those tears before they fell, and their sting seemed only to intensify the keenness of the moment.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“We’re not Christians, we’re capitalists,” he said. “Everybody in this whangdanged country is a capitalist, whether he likes it or not. Everyone in this country is one of the world’s most voracious consumers, using resources at a rate twenty times greater than that of anyone else on this poor earth. And Christmas is our golden opportunity to pick up the pace.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“We endured. Hour after hour we endured, while inside us life’s scream ran on, unstoppable. When the stars began imperceptibly to fade, we were still there, still breathing, and our father was still dead beside us, his face both sharp and slumped.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“She doesn’t scream, but she groans and the sounds she makes are beyond the pain and work of labor, beyond human—or even animal—life. They are the sounds that move the earth, the sounds that give voice to the deep, violent fissures in the bark of the redwoods. They are the sounds of splitting cells, of bonding atoms, the sounds of the waxing moon and the forming stars.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“We knew a flood was inconvenient and destructive. At the same time we couldn’t help but feel a peculiar sort of delight that something beyond us was large enough to destroy the inexorability of our routines.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“But whether I touch him or I run, whether I’m dreaming or I’m awake, on his birthday or on all other days, my whole life has been contaminated with the fact that he is dead.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“It came to me then that I could take comfort in knowing my father and my mother were dead, that death's mystery had already embraced them. They had gone on ahead, had broken the trail, and because of that, death seemed a little cozier, a little safer, a little less terrifying. Because my parents were already there - in death - I saw I could afford to enjoy the sunlight for as long as I possibly could. Sitting beside my father's grave, I was glad - and proud - to be alive.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Despite her way with fire, Eva always makes me think of water. She's slender and sparkling as the stream beyond our clearing, and like that stream she seems content to live a part of her life underground, seems sure - even now - that she is headed somewhere.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Maybe it's true that the people who live through the times that become history's pivotal points are those least likely to understand them. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln himself could have answered the inevitable test questions about the causes of th Civil War.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“Maybe it’s true that the people who live through the times that become history’s pivotal points are those least likely to understand them.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“I have to admit that this notebook, with its wilderness of blank pages, seems almost more threat than gift—for what can I write here that it will not hurt to remember? You”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

“The walls inside were charred from some ancient fire, blackened and lichened and weathered hard, smelling faintly of a smoke so old there may be no one still alive who could possibly remember the flame.”
― Jean Hegland, Into the Forest