The Light Through the Leaves Quotes

“Hatred was an addictive emotion, and it thrived best with frequent injections that kept the high going.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“Trees can do this amazing thing called Compartmentalization of Decay. When they get an injury, the cells around the wound change and put up a wall that contains the process of decay. Around that wall, a different kind of change in the cells forms another wall. Then a third wall. And a fourth.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“Who could know their future with a person they cared about? And even if they did somehow find out something bad was going to happen with that person, would they give up on them? Let them suffer alone? Love couldn’t be removed like a thorn from a thumb.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“The astrophysical, geological, and evolutionary processes that made you—and all life on earth—are the great wonders of our universe.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“Personne n’est fait pour la sédentarité. Mais ce n’est pas à toi que je vais l’apprendre. L’agriculture a fait de nous des captifs. On n’a jamais voulu faire pousser des champs et se cloîtrer dans des maisons. On était des nomades depuis des millions d’années. Il se décala en face d’elle. — Tu connais cette sensation d’enfermement, quand tu vis trop longtemps entre quatre murs ? Peu importe la surface, ça pourrait être un appartement, une maison ou un château. À un moment, tu la ressens. Tu vois de quoi je parle ? Elle acquiesça. Elle l’avait déjà ressentie. — C’est ta mémoire génétique qui te fait voir, entendre, sentir et regretter le mode de vie des centaines de générations qui nous ont précédés. Au fond, on est encore une espèce nomade. Tout le monde porte cette sensation en soi, mais en général, les gens ne font pas le lien et ne comprennent pas ce qui les pousse à désirer ce qui est hors d’atteinte. Alors ils achètent des voitures toujours plus chères, des baraques toujours plus grosses, sans jamais trouver d’apaisement. Ils continuent de sombrer dans la dépression jusqu’à la mort.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“People who love each other can stay together in other ways. In their hearts.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“You’re so strong about everything. But now I see I shouldn’t have admired that.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“She was the kind of compassionate, genuine person Ellis had always wanted to be.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“This grass is making food for itself from sunlight. And that food feeds many creatures. I believe photosynthesis is a kind of miracle. The poet Walt Whitman called a leaf of grass ‘the journey-work of the stars.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“It’s too sterile. People evolved with fresh air and dirt and plants. They can’t feel good in a place like this. They can only feel sick. He needs to touch the earth to have a good reason to wake up.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“That made it better, really, because you could say any secret thing you wouldn’t say to someone who was listening. That was all that mattered, getting some of the words out before they piled too full inside you.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“That’s your genetic memories making you see, hear, smell, touch, and long for how we lived for hundreds of generations. Inside we’re still a nomadic species. All people feel it, but most of them don’t know what’s making them want something that’s always out of reach. They buy fancier cars and bigger houses, but it never makes them feel better. They just keep getting more depressed until they die.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves

“Ellis wasn’t like regular people. She was unsociable and peculiar, not the kind of person anyone wanted to stick with.”
― Glendy Vanderah, The Light Through the Leaves