“I let it go. It s like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.”
“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”
“Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity. Perfect love is perfect self-forgetfulness. Hence where there is love in a home, unselfishness is the law. Each forgets self and lives for others. But where there is selfishness it mars joy. One selfish soul will destroy the sweetness of life in any home. It is like an ugly bush in the midst of a garden of flowers. It was selfishness that destroyed the first home and blighted all the loveliness of Paradise; and it has been blighting lovely things in earth s home ever since. We need to guard against this spirit.”
“How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it s good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what s it all for? All I tried to be, all I ever wanted and went away for, what s it all for? Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it s almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember. And God knows he was lucky, so many ways, and God knows he was thankful. Everything was good and better than he could have hoped for, better than he ever deserved; only, whatever it was and however good it was, it wasn t what you once had been, and had lost, and could never have again, and once in a while, once in a long time, you remembered, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart.”
“No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home place “biocentric” or “anthropocentric.” None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as “ecological,” deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of “ecology” and “ecosystems.” But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people. And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is “work.” We are connected by work even to the places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is “good work,” for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth. The name of our present society’s connection to the earth is “bad work” – work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it.”
“London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.”
“Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home.”
“It s one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you re boozing with Yankee writers in Martha s Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It s something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed s drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can t go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you--they re not, don t flatter yourself, they couldn t care less--but because once you re in orbit and you return to Reed s drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha s Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it s no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.”
“The cruel irony of housework: people only notice when you don t do it.”
“Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.”
“And I was even beginning to think home might be with you.”
“You can’t go home again” ─ isn’t necessarily that places change but people do.”
“You feel more like home to me than any place I ve ever been.”
“The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)”
“Aedion touched her shoulder. Welcome home, Aelin. A land of towering mountains-the Stagehorns-spread before them, with valleys and rivers and hills; a land of untamed, wild beauty. Terrasen. And the smell-of pine and snow.. How had she never realized that Rowan s scent was of Terrasen, of home? Rowan came close enough to graze her shoulder and murmured, I feel as if I ve been looking for this place my entire life.”
“I don t mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don t regard a home as a...well, as a place, a building...a house...of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can...well, nest.”
“Home is everything you can walk to.”