A Hut at the Edge of the Village Quotes

“The songs I sang had big, wide, open longings in them and that is why I sang them. I wanted the horizons of longings in those songs to lie down with the horizon of our world and make it less lonely. Singing those songs in the way I sang them, I was trying to rescue a people up into their longings. I was trying to tell them that there was something more than bog sadness to the world, I was trying to tell them there is something more to the world than the blowing wind and the wet rain. And I sang because I wanted to be heard. Passing every house, I wanted the people who were getting up in it or making tea in it to recognize me as me.”
― John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village

“How could something so yellow as a buttercup come out of brown soil? How could something so purple as an orchid come up out of it? How could something so perfect as a cowslip come up from it?”
― John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village

“When culture is in woeful crisis, the insights rarely come from parliament, senate, or committee, they tend to come from a hut at the edge of the village. Let’s go there. There is tremendous, unexpected hope waiting.”
― John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village

“Underneath a motorway there was once a road, underneath the road there was a lane, underneath the lane there was a track and underneath the track there was once an animal path. Hoof prints under the concrete.”
― John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village

“You absorb the story, know it in your bones and then without deciding how you’re going to tell it just open your mouth and let it come out the way it wants to come out.”
― John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village