Jean Craighead George Quotes

To Squanto, as to all Native Americans, the land did not belong to the people, people belonged to the land.

I heard you humming."
"Yes," he said. "I hum a great deal. Can you hum?"
"Yes," I replied. "I can hum. I hum a good deal, too, and even sing, especially when I get out of the spring in the morning. Then I really sing aloud."
"Let's hear you sing aloud."
So I said, feeling very relaxed with the sun shining on my head, "All right, I'll sing you my cold water song.

When the crops were thriving, Squanto took the men to the open forests where the turkey dwelled. He pointed out the nuts, seeds, and insects that the iridescent birds fed upon.
He showed them the leaf nests of the squirrels and the hideouts of the skunks and raccoons. Walking silently along bear trails, he took them to the blueberry patches.
He told them that deer moved about at sundown and sunrise. He took them inland to valleys where the deer congregated in winter and were easy to harvest. He walked the Pilgrims freely over the land.
To Squanto, as to all Native Americans, the land did not belong to the people, people belonged to the land.
He took the children into the meadows to pick wild strawberries. He showed them how to dig up the sweet roots of the wild Jerusalem artichoke. In mid-summer he led them to cranberry bogs and gooseberry patches. Together they gathered chestnuts, hickory nuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts in September.
He paddled the boys into the harbor in his dugout canoe to set lobster pots made of reeds and sinew. While they waited to lift their pots, he taught them the creatures of the tidal pools.

I love to travel, but when I really want to escape, I read a book.

The dog wags its tail only at living things.
A tail wag, the equivalent of a human smile,
is bestowed upon people, dogs , cats, squirrels,
even mice and butterflies. - but no lifeless
things. A dog won't wag its tail to its dinner
or to a bed, card, stick, or even a bone.

There is something all life has in common, and when I know what it is I shall know myself.

I throw back my head, and, feeling free as the wind, breathe in the fresh mountain air. Although I am heavy-hearted, my spirits are rising. To walk in nature is always good medicine.

I first became aware of the delights of the natural world when my father, an entomologist, presented me with what looked like a twig. When it got up and walked, my delight was such that I wrote a poem, 'To a Walking Stick.'

When fear seizes, change what you are doing. You are doing something wrong.

Children will often write, 'We love your books because there are no adults in them.'

The climate warmed. Wild grasses, flowers and trees took root in the land behind the huge rock. In time, their growing and dying made deep rich loam on which a magnificent forest grew. Into the forest came bear, deer, brightly colored birds, and the Pawtuxets, a tribe of the Wampanoag, The People of the Dawn.

Cats ... are completely self-sufficient and can leave you at any time and go off and make a living. And yet cats can have warm and loving relationships with humans.

I kept on writing and illustrating, for this is what I did well because I loved it.

Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.

Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning

To be a writer you should read, write and talk to people, hear their knowledge, hear their problems. Be a good listener. The rest will come.

I hope that the message I conveyed in 'Julie of the Wolves' is to tell young people to think things out. Think independently.

Chicken is Good! It tastes like chicken.

I don't know why, but this seemed like one of the nicest things I had learned in the woods--that earthworms, lowly, confined to the darkness of the earth, could make just a little stir in the world.

Hunger is a funny thing. It has a kind of intelligence of it's own.

See that falcon? Hear those white-throated sparrows? Smell that skunk? Well, the falcon takes the sky, the white-throated sparrow takes the low bushes, the skunk takes the earth ... I take the woods.

There the old Eskimo hunters she had known in her childhood thought the riches of life were intelligence, fearlessness, and love. A man with these gifts was rich and was a great spirit who was admired in the same way that the gussaks admired a man with money and goods.

I hope my books empower kids, and that they learn how to work out their problems themselves.

Ask nature questions, and you will get answers.