Apple Trees Quotes

Jacob wrote that the true poet 'is like a man who is happy anywhere, in endless measure, if he is allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set. The false poet travels abroad in strange countries and hopes to be uplifted by the mountains of Switzerland, the sky and sea of Italy. He comes to them and is dissatisfied. He is not as happy as the man who stays at home and sees the apple trees flower in spring, and hears the small birds singing among the branches ~ Jacob Grimm

As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. ~ Solomon Ibn Gabirol

Presently I went back to my Companions, and slept under the apple trees, wrapped in my cloak and with my head on Cabal's flank for a pillow. There is no pillow in the world so good as a hound's flank. ~ Rosemary Sutcliff

Carrefour"

O You,
Who came upon me once
Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing,
Why did you not strangle me before speaking
Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words
And then leave me to the mercy
Of the forest bees.

Originally published in Coterie: A Quarterly: Art, Prose, and Poetry No. 4. Edited by Lall Chaman (1920) ~ Amy Lowell

My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights. ~ Alice Hoffman

It was a sunny day in early summer, and he could hear birdsong. In a nearby orchard that had so far escaped shelling, apple trees were blossoming bravely. Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees, Walter thought apocalyptically. Perhaps that would be for the best. ~ Ken Follett

Listen carefully. Listen and you'll hear everything you need to know.

a nightmare is a different case entirely, it's a box of black shadows and vicious red stars, something to keep carefully closed, lest the ground below be broken in two

now it's a time like any other, long minutes, tedious seconds, nothing more than flat time moving forward, like it or not

it is impossible to stop some things, rainfall, for instance, and love at first sight, and the slow and steady path of sorrow

the cruel and desperate variety that always accompanies yearning for someone you're bound to lose

when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. there are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shine like heaven, so far above us qw can never hope to reach such heights

sometimes those who love you best are the ones who leave you behind

hearts were made for being broken. there's really no way around it if you want to be a human being.


...consider what people are capable of going through in this world and how much courage it's possible to have

when someone kisses you with everything they feel, you don't stop thinking about it fo ~ Alice Hoffman

Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple trees. Dank walls rose between towers that were topped with cones of moulting shingle. Weeds throve in every cranny. Moss mottled the walls. Fissures branched like forked lightning across damp masonry which the rusting iron clamps tried to hold together, and buttresses of brick shored up the perilously leaning walls. The mountains, delaying sunrise and hastening dusk, must have halved again the short winter days. Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation. But, in tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk. Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came? Immured in those six-foot-thick walls, overgrown outside with the conquering ivy and within by genealogical trees all moulting with mildew? My thoughts flew at once to solitary figures…a windowed descendant of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Charlemagne, alone with the Sacred Heart and her beads, or a family of wax-pale barons, recklessly inbred; bachelors with walrus moustaches, bent double with rheumatism, shuddering from room to room and coughing among their lurchers, while their cleft palates called to each other down corridors that were all but pitch dark. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

He wondered if he would live to see the blossom on his apple trees and felt an answering pop inside himself. Ah, so it would not be long now. It began to snow lightly, the last flakes to fall before the spring. He put on his wedding finery, the clothes he had worn so long ago when he married his beloved Pamposh, and which he had kept all this time wrapped in tissue paper in a trunk. As a bridegroom he went outdoors and the snowflakes caressed his grizzled cheeks. His mind was alert, he was ambulatory and nobody was waiting for him with a club. He had his body and his mind and it seemed he was to be spared a brutal end. That at least was kind. He went into his apple orchard, seated himself cross-legged beneath a tree, closed his eyes, heard the verses of the Rig-Veda fill the world with beauty and ceased upon the midnight with no pain. ~ Salman Rushdie

The administration often used the analogy of planting the "seeds of democracy" in the Middle East, as if they'd sprout into democratic regimes as nature took its course. Democracy doesn't sprout like apple trees. Scattering the seeds isn't enough, no matter how many soldiers do it. To continue with the gardening analogy the Bush administration seemed to love (there were also many "seeds of terror" and "seeds of hope"), democracy is more like a fragile flower that requires constant attention and the right soil. Dictatorships and fascist regimes are hardy weeds that sprout on their own. ~ Richard Engel

Apple trees bear apples, wheat stalks produce wheat, and forgiven people forgive people. ~ Max Lucado

Fortunately, like most children, I had learned what is most valuable, most indispensable for life before school years began, taught by apple trees, by rain and sun, river and woods ... ~ Hermann Hesse

It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man - as he had long suspected - was the vilest work of God, and that only a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best exterminated. ~ Rafael Sabatini

I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced. ~ Henry David Thoreau

He felt something on his neck. Warmth.
He hesitated, then turned weary eyes toward the sky. Sunlight bathed his face. He gaped; it seemed so long since he'd seen pure sunlight. It shone down through a large break in the clouds, comforting, like the warmth of an oven baking a loaf of Adrinne's thick sourdough bread.
Almen stood, raising a hand to shade his eyes. He took a deep, long breath, and smelled… apple blossoms? He spun with a start.
The apple trees were flowering.
That was plain ridiculous. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn't dispel the image. They were blooming, all of them, white flowers breaking out between the leaves.
[...] What was happening? Apple trees didn't blossom twice. Was he going mad?
Footsteps sounded softly on the path that ran past the orchard. Almen spun to find a tall young man walking down out of the foothills. He had deep red hair and he wore ragged clothing: a brown cloak with loose sleeves and a simple white linen shirt beneath. The trousers were finer, black with a delicate embroidery of gold at the cuff.
"Ho, stranger," Almen said, raising a hand, not knowing what else to say, not even sure if he'd seen what he thought he'd seen. "Did you… did you get lost up in the foothills?"
The man stopped, turning sharply. He seemed surprised to find Almen there. With a start, Almen realized the man's left arm ended in a stump.
The stranger looked about, then breathed in deeply. "No. I'm not lost. Finally. It fe ~ Robert Jordan

Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth? ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake, and set up our computers among the wild apple trees. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution - a melding into the godhead, into love - is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to acknowledge that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy. Or, barring that, to turn out a good thin-crust pizza and a strong glass of beer. ~ Tom Robbins

My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my friends under the apple trees. ~ Anna Sewell

we try looking there?" "Good idea," Rachel said, walking toward it. "Oh, aren't the trees beautiful with all their blossoms?" The others agreed. Delicate sprays of pinky-white flowers lined the branches of the apple trees. "And that one is even prettier than the others," Kirsty said, pointing out a tree a short distance away. It was covered in blossoms. "I wonder why it's flowering so well?" A thought struck her and she stopped. Kirsty looked excitedly at Tia. "You don't think it has anything to do with your petal's magic powers, do you?" Tia's eyes lit up. ~ Daisy Meadows

There would be plump artichokes ready for him in the garden, trees heavy with plums, soft roses, the river flowing, and between the crab-Apple trees the hammock hanging like a smile in a landscape as familiar to him as the face of his mother. ~ Polly Samson

And what is this wild summons? What art is asked of us? The gift offered is different for each but all are equal in grandeur. To paint, draw, dance, compose. To write songs, poems, letters, diaries, prayers. To set a violet on the sill, stitch a quilt,; bake bread; plant marigolds, beans, apple trees. To follow the track of the forest elk, the neighborhood coyote, the cupboard mouse. To open the windows, air beds, sweep clean the corners. To hold the child's hand, listen to the vagrant's story, paint the elder friend's fingernails a delightful shade of pink while wrapped in a blanket she knit with deft young fingers of her past. To wander paths, nibble purslane, notice spiders. To be rained upon. To listen with changed ears and sing back what we hear. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

My apple trees will never get across
and eat the cones under his pines,I tell him.He only says,Good fences make good neighbors. ~ Robert Frost

The Way the Cards Fall "

Why did you stay away
so long? I've buried another
husband, since I last saw you
holding to the horizon.
I hear where you now live
it snows year-round.
The pear & apple trees
have even missed you–
dead branches scattered
about like war. Come closer,
my eyes have grown night-dim.
Across the field white boxes
of honeybees silent as dirt,
silent as your missent
postcards. Evening
sunlight's faded my hair,
the old stable's slouched
to the ground. I dug a hole
for that calico, Cyclops,
two years ago. Now
milkweed & blackberries
are keepers of the cornfield.
That's how the cards fall;
& Anna, that beautiful girl
you once loved enough
to die over & over again for,
now lives in New Orleans
on both sides
of Bourbon Street. ~ Yusef Komunyakaa

Remember the golden apple-trees;
O, do not pity them, as you watch them drop
one by one,
for they fall exhausted, numb, blind
but in certain ecstasy,
for theirs is the hunger for Paradise. ~ H.D.

Dutifully, the Count put the spoon in his mouth. In an instant, there was the familiar sweetness of fresh honey---sunlit, golden, and gay. Given the time of year, the Count was expecting this first impression to be followed by a hint of lilacs from the Alexander Gardens or cherry blossoms from the Garden Ring. But as the elixir dissolved on his tongue, the Count became aware of something else entirely. Rather than the flowering trees of Central Moscow, the honey had a hint of a grassy riverbank.....the trace of a summer breeze......a suggestion of a pergola.....But most of all there was the unmistakable essence of a thousand apple trees in bloom.
"Nizhny Novgorod", he said.
And it was. ~ Amor Towles

In the years that she had been tying scraps to the branches, the tree had died and the fruit had turned bitter. The other apple trees were hale and healthy, but this one, the tree of her remembrances, was as black and twisted as the bombed-out town behind it. ~ Kristin Hannah

Ben remembered that in Italy, he and Rachel had slipped down between rows of apple trees on the plain of the Po, deep into the cool and dark of orchards, and there they had kissed with the sadness of newlyweds who know that their kisses are too poignantly tender and that their good fortune is subject, like all things, to the crush of time, which remorselessly obliterates what is most desired and pervades all that is beautiful. ~ David Guterson

You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.
Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,
laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,
something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.
Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.
And by the lake's edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;
perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial
sounds or gestures like
a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother
holding out a plate of little cakes -

as far as I remember, changed
in no detail, the moment
vivid, intact, having never been
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age
hungry for life, utterly confident -

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green
pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly. ~ Louise Gluck

Not sorry, not calling, not crying
All will pass like smoke of white apple trees
Seized by the gold of autumn,
I will no longer be young. ~ Sergei Yesenin

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry -
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.< ~ Robert Frost

In the wild a plant and its pests are continually coevolving, in a dance of resistance and conquest that can have no ultimate victor. But coevolution ceases in an orchard of grafted trees, since they are genetically identical from generation to generation. The problem very simply is that the apple trees no longer reproduce sexually, as they do when they're grown from seed, and sex is nature's way of creating fresh genetic combinations. At the same time the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and insects keep very much at it, reproducing sexually and continuing to evolve until eventually they hit on the precise genetic combination that allows them to overcome whatever resistance the apples may have once possessed. Suddenly total victory is in the pests' sight - unless, that is, people come to the tree's rescue, wielding the tools of modern chemistry. ~ Michael Pollan

When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh. ~ Edward Abbey

We all face difficulties, but they should not become our core. We grieve, we suffer, we weep. Challenges are experiences that help us to grow, like the winds that help strengthen the roots of the apple trees in the Cider Orchard. Storms are always temporary and should never distract us from the beautiful days that were before or will come after. Do not become so fixed on a single injustice that you can no longer remember others may be suffering near you. Like the healing of the body when it is ill, the healing of the heart requires patience. ~ Jeff Wheeler

Haska - a dim legendary figure of a generation ago, who went back up the mountain and cleared six acres of brush in the tiny valley that took his name. He broke the soil, reared stone walls and a house, and planted apple trees. And already the site of the house is undiscoverable, the location of the stone walls may be deduced from the configuration of the landscape, and I am renewing the battle, putting in angora goats to browse away the brush that has overrun Haska's clearing and choked Haska's apple trees to death. So I, too, scratch the land with my brief endeavour and flash my name across a page of legal script ere I pass and the page grows musty. ~ Jack London

The french language is emotive. The verbs are strong and definite. The nouns are masculine or french. I could never understand why the farm would be feminine yet the farmhouse masculine; the pear and apple trees masculine yet the fruit feminine. ~ Vicki Archer

COME HOME, TENAR! COME HOME!"
In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face toward home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey. ~ William Blake

He felt that he had always been there, among the apple trees, watching for the woman in the tower to come to her window. Seasons may have passed, years may have grown green on the bough, then withered and fallen, but he would stand there and wait for a chance to keep a promise he had made. ~ Ava Zavora

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Inferno: Canto XIII
Not yet had Nessus reached the other side,
When we had put ourselves within a wood,
That was not marked by any path whatever.
Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour,
Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled,
Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison.
Such tangled thickets have not, nor so dense,
Those savage wild beasts, that in hatred hold
'Twixt Cecina and Corneto the tilled places.
There do the hideous Harpies make their nests,
Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades,
With sad announcement of impending doom;
Broad wings have they, and necks and faces human,
And feet with claws, and their great bellies fledged;
They make laments upon the wondrous trees. ~ Dante Alighieri

A comely sight indeed it is to see, a world of blossoms on an apple tree. ~ John Bunyan

It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Up past the old lime kiln
built into the side of a hill
we take a hard right at a clearing
lined by brittle apple trees
still willing to bear fruit.

I snap sticks beneath my feet
and steal pictures of the view
while you reach for something
sweet, as much as it bows
to you. ~ Kristen Henderson

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

Song for the Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look

Less at its features than its darkening frame

Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,

Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.

Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease

The lead and marble figures watch the show

Of yet another summer loath to go

Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.


Now that I have your face by heart, I look.


Now that I have your voice by heart, I read

In the black chords upon a dulling page

Music that is not meant for music's cage,

Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.

The staves are shuttled over with a stark

Unprinted silence. In a double dream

I must spell out the storm, the running stream.

The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.


Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.


Now that I have your heart by heart, I see

The wharves with their great ships and architraves;

The rigging and the cargo and the slaves

On a strange beach under a broken sky.

O not departure, but a voyage done!

The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps

Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps

Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening ~ Louise Bogan

Ooo, let's see, I need to get my spicy barbecue sauce. Definitely some oven mitts, 'cause he's gonna be hot from being flame-broiled. I need to get a couple of them apple trees to make wood chips so the meat be nice and appley tasting. Give it that extra yumminess, 'cause I don't like that Daimon flavor. Ack! (Simi) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness. ~ Gustave Flaubert

I've seen spring come to the orchard every year as far back as I can remember and I've never grown tired of it. Oh, the wonder of it! The outrageous beauty! God didn't have to give us cherry blossoms you know. He didn't have to make apple trees and peach trees burst into flower and fragrance. But God just loves to splurge. He gives us all this magnificence and then, if that isn't enough, He provides fruit from such extravagance. ~ Lynn Austin

An apple tree is just like a person. In order to thrive, it needs companionship that's similar to it in some ways, but quite different than others. ~ Jeffrey Stepakoff

And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer
apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The fruit is what really matters, not how gnarly or beautiful the apple tree is. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Miranda slept in the orchard, lying in a long chair beneath the apple tree. Her book had fallen into the grass, and her finger still seemed to point at the sentence 'Ce pays est vraiment un des coins du monde oui le rire des filles elate le mieux … ' as if she had fallen asleep just there. The opals on her finger flushed green, flushed rosy, and again flushed orange as the sun, oozing through the apple-trees, filled them. Then, when the breeze blew, her purple dress rippled like a flower attached to a stalk; the grasses nodded; and the white butterfly came blowing this way and that just above her face. ~ Virginia Woolf

A man would have to be an idiot to write a book of laws for an apple tree telling it to bear apples and not thorns, seeing that the apple-tree will do it naturally and far better than any laws or teaching can prescribe. ~ Martin Luther

It is no longer just engineers who dominate our technology leadership, because it is no longer the case that computers are so mysterious that only engineers can understand what they are capable of. There is an industry-wide shift toward more "product thinking" in leadership
leaders who understand the social and cultural contexts in which our technologies are deployed.
Products must appeal to human beings, and a rigorously cultivated humanistic sensibility is a valued asset for this challenge. That is perhaps why a technology leader of the highest status
Steve Jobs
recently credited an appreciation for the liberal arts as key to his company's tremendous success with their various i-gadgets. ~ Damon Horowitz

WHAT'S WRONG WITH ASSHOLES, BABY? YOU'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE, I'VE GOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU GO TO THE STORE AND BUY A PORTERHOUSE STEAK, THAT HAD AN ASSHOLE! ASSHOLES COVER THE EARTH! IN A WAY TREES HAVE ASSHOLES BUT YOU CAN'T FIND THEM, THEY JUST DROP THEIR LEAVES. YOUR ASSHOLE, MY ASSHOLE, THE WORLD IS FULL OF BILLIONS OF ASSHOLES. THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE CARWASH BOY HAS AN ASSHOLE, THE JUDGE AND THE MURDERER HAVE ASSHOLES ... EVEN THE PURPLE STICKINPIN HAS AN ASSHOLE! ~ Charles Bukowski

Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers;
But the spring breeze
Brings forth myriad blossoms. ~ Ikkyu

Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they're with. ~ Paul Krugman

I was supposed to be part of a story, but I fell from there like a leaf in autumn. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Who else goes to the woods to find peace only to discover themself in the process? I find forests unclutter the mind with each breath the trees afford me. ~ Michael Poeltl

See that tree?" It was a stubby cypress tree, all bent and twisted.
"Yeah, I see it."
"It's my favorite tree."
"It's not that great a tree," I said.
"That's it. That's exactly it. It's like me. The wind beat the holy crap out of it when it was just a sapling. Never could straighten itself out again." He sort of smiled at me. "But, Zach, it didn't die." He looked like maybe he wanted to cry. But he didn't. "It's alive."
"Maybe it should have just given up."
"That tree didn't know how to do that. It only knew how to live. Crooked. Bent. Taller trees dwarfing it even more. It just wanted to live. I named it, you know?"
He was waiting for me to ask what he'd named it
but I decided I didn't want to ask.
"Zach," he whispered. "The tree's name is Zach."[p. 135] ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The forest was not dark, because darkness has nothing to do with the forest - the forest is made of life, of light - but the trees moved with wind and subtle creatures. ~ Lauren Groff

Over the ten years since she'd been born, the trees of Briary Swamp, West Virginia, had peered through May's window night after night. They had watched over her thoughtful brown eyes, the imaginative crook of her head, the strong character of her knobby knees. The trees had laughed at the jokes May told her cat. Their leaves had whispered over her wild inventions, her colorful stories, her drawings. ~ Jodi Lynn Anderson

Fr. Amphilochios, the geronta or elder on the island of Patmos when I first stayed there, would have been in full agreement. Do you know, he said, that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment love the trees. Whoever does not love trees, so he believed, does not love God. When you plant a tree, he insisted, you plant hope, you plant peace, you plant love, and you will receive God's blessing. ~ Kallistos Ware

I am pleased enough with the surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on the rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need? ~ Edward Abbey

You're missing the point! ... We could make it rain cupcakes from the sky! Raspberry-jam pies would grow on trees, and chocolate rabbits would poop chocolate buttons! ~ Lisa Mantchev

This World"

It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.
What was only a trial run was taken seriously.
The rivers will return to their beginnings.
The wind will cease in its turning about.
Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.
Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror–
They are children again.
The dead will wake up, not comprehending.
Till everything that happened has unhappened.
What a relief! Breathe freely, you who have suffered much. ~ Czesław Miłosz

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them. ~ Jodi Picoult

Lincoln described the relation between the Declaration and the Constitution as the relationship between "an apple of gold" and "the picture," or frame, of silver. The Declaration is the golden apple, and the Constitution the silver frame around it that holds it in place and provides the structure. In the first we may find the purposes of the American republic. In the second we may find its method of operation. ~ Politics Faculty, Hillsdale College

But at some point in her passage, the trees began to change. They stretched taller, and the soft, pale bark darkened, roughened. She put her hand to a tree and touched the lichen growing dark green upon brown, and it felt like old cork, dry and crumbling. Here the sun mellowed, took on the cast of late afternoon, and the shadows seemed to fall a bit longer; the forest had sunk into a deeper silence, magnifying what sounds did arise. The sudden, quick crash of a fox bounding through the brush was as loud as the slam of a great wooden door. ~ Malinda Lo

Given a limited budget, the most effective expenditure of funds to improve a street would probably be on trees. ~ Allan Jacobs

Be like the sun
who fell in love with the moon
and shared all his light.
Be like the moon
who became a lighthouse
to guide others in the night.
Be like the mountains
who were once hills
that wanted to kiss the sky.
Be like the trees
who are firmly grounded
but dream up high.
Be like the waves
who play and tickle
each other endlessly.
Be like the children
who enjoy and live
in the present entirely.
Be like the God
who equally loves
everything and everyone.
And be like the love
who brought compassion
when she visited the sun. ~ Kamand Kojouri

Jack believed in something - he believed in white witches and sleighs pulled by wolves, and in the world the trees obscured. He believed that there were better things in the woods. He believed in palaces of ice and hearts to match. Hazel had, too. Hazel had believed in woodsmen and magic shoes and swanskins and the easy magic of a compass. She had believed that because someone needing saving they were savable. She had believed in these things, but not anymore. And this is why she had to rescue Jack, even though he might not hear what she had to tell him. ~ Anne Ursu

Orchards of silver trees bore the most delicious fruits that had ever existed. The angels feasted and gave thanks for their first and only home. Their voices joined together in praise of their Creator, forming a blended sound that in humans' throats would later be known as harmony. ~ Lauren Kate

Geek e-mail sign-off: No trees were killed to send this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

My main ambition as a gardener is to water my orange trees with gin, then all I have to do is squeeze the juice into a glass. ~ W.C. Fields

Only trees are rooted in land, and there they stay. You should know this, great oak. But a man whose heart is rooted in family finds a home wherever his pack is, and he is truly the free man. ~ Dannika Dark

Were you ever in Elsinore, Mr Jagiello?' asked Jack.
Oh, many a time, sir,' said Jagiello. 'I know it well. I believe I could show you Hamlet's grave from here.'
I was really wondering whether they had ten or thirteen inch mortars on the upper terrace,' said Jack, 'but I should be very happy to see Hamlet's grave as well.'
Both ten and thirteen, sir. And if you go a little to the right from the farthest turret, there are some trees: and among those trees there is the grave. You can just make out the rocks.'
So there he lies,' said jack, his telescope leveled. 'Well, well: we must all come to it. But it was a capital piece, capital. I never laughed so much in my life.'
A capital piece indeed,' said Stephen, 'and I doubt I could have done much better myself. But, do you know, I have never in my own mind classed it among the comedies. Pray did you read it recently?'
I never read it at all,' said Jack. 'That is to say, not right through. No: I did something better than that - I acted in it. There, the upper terrace fires. I was a midshipman at the time. ~ Patrick O'Brian

Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees ... Abused soil brings forth stunted growths. ~ Margaret Sanger

I find that men as high as trees will write, dialogue-wise yet no man doth them slight. For writing so: Indeed if they abuse, truth, cursed be they, and the craft they use. To that intent; but yet let truth be free, to make her salleys upon Thee, and Me. Which way it pleases God: For who knows how, Better than he that taught us first to Plough. To guide our Mind and Pens for his Design? And he makes base things usher in Divine. ~ John Bunyan

I have had the most wonderful childhood, and I was raised in a very loving family. And it was nothing short of an amazing privilege because I was incredibly lucky to be able to play up in trees and make it like silly dens in a bush and stuff like that. ~ Rose Leslie

It was an overcast day, but the cloudy weather did not detract from the signs of spring that were evident all around them. It was the second week in March, and the official start of the season was just a couple of weeks away. The magnolia trees had already bloomed, and tulips, daffodils, and wildflowers were shooting up all around the convent's gardens. ~ Rosanna Chiofalo

THE FUZZY GREEN light gradually resolved itself into trees, and a narrow street of damp terra-cotta bricks stretched lazily into the distance. ~ Fuminori Nakamura

In AP Bio, I learned that the cells in our body are replaced every seven years, which means that one day, I'll have a body full of cells that were never sick. But it also means that parts of me that knew and loved Sadie will disappear. I'll still remember loving her, but it'll be a different me who loved her. And maybe this is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency.

The percentage of my skin that touched hers will lessen until one day my lips won't be the same lips that kissed hers, and all I'll have are the memories. Memories of cottages in the woods, arranged in a half-moon. Of the tall metal tray return in the dining hall. Of the study tables in the library. The rock where we kissed. The sunken boat in Latham's lake, Sadie, snapping a photograph, laughing the lunch line, lying next to me at the movie night in her green dress, her voice on the phone, her apple-flavored lips on mine. And it's so unfair.

All of it. ~ Robyn Schneider

To catch affection, try being efficient by using a fishing net. You can't sit back and wait for romance to grow on trees. ~ Jarod Kintz

Apple of My Eye is a twisted collection of short stories by Amy Grech, including the sexy and deadly title story that makes you want to stay home with the door locked and the lights on. Grech's stories are sinister, sneaky, convoluted and dangerous - and absolutely not to be missed!
- Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award-Winning Author of
Ghost Road Blues and Dead Man's Song ~ Jonathan Maberry

Once upon a time, there was Candy and Dan. Things were very hot that year. All the wax was melting in the trees. He would climb balconies, climb everywhere, do anything for her, oh Danny boy. Thousands of birds, the tiniest birds, adorned her hair. Everything was gold. One night the bed caught fire. He was handsome and a very good criminal. We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars. It was the afternoon of extravagant delight. Danny the daredevil. Candy went missing. The days last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks. I want to try it your way this time. You came into my life really fast and I liked it. We squelched in the mud of our joy. I was wet-thighed with surrender. Then there was a gap in things and the whole earth tilted. This is the business. This, is what we're after. With you inside me comes the hatch of death. And perhaps I'll simply never sleep again. The monster in the pool. We are a proper family now with cats and chickens and runner beans. Everywhere I looked. And sometimes I hate you. Friday -- I didn't mean that, mother of the blueness. Angel of the storm. Remember me in my opaqueness. You pointed at the sky, that one called Sirius or dog star, but on here on earth. Fly away sun. Ha ha fucking ha you are so funny Dan. A vase of flowers by the bed. My bare blue knees at dawn. These ruffled sheets and you are gone and I am going to. I broke your head on the back of the bed but the baby he died in the morning. I gave him a name. His name was Thomas. Poor little go ~ Luke Davies

The desired Islamic state might be likened to an orchard planted with olive and palm trees that will take a relatively long time to produce fruit. ~ Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

Apple is in a position they've been in a lot of times before. They're like Moses showing the way to the promised land, but they don't actually go there. ~ Tim O'Reilly

When someone "can not" or will not let go of some notion, injustice or loss, a fixation can develop, which can "fix" that person in place. When a person, a soul (or a group), becomes stuck or fixated on some specific perspective or emotion to the exclusion of the bigger picture, one can get a distorted view, one can be lost for a while. I am reminded of the saying one can't see the forest for the trees, for short-sightedness, especially combined with reactive emotions, obstinacy, and even obsessiveness, can cause one to lose all proportion and perspective. One can lose one's bearings; One can get lost. ~ Stephen Poplin

I prayed that our growth would be as strong and determined as the seeds of coconut palms, boldly reaching skyward toward the sun diligently boring deeper into the earth to secure a firm foundation for the beautiful, durable, fruit-bearing trees they would become. For me, Mhonda was the place to continue the growth of the still young but strong roots of my tree planted in Kifungilo. This was my life now, the life I'd prayed for, the life that would provide me with an education and would open doors. I wanted this life very much. I told my wavering spirit to bear with me because, just like the coconut palm, I would sway and bend and bruise, but I would survive. I would have to become the tree in the African saying: 'The tree that bends with the wind does not break. ~ Maria Nhambu

But Apple really beats to a different drummer. I used to say that Apple should be the Sony of this business, but in reality, I think Apple should be the Apple of this business. ~ Steve Jobs

Lies I've told my 3 year old recently
Trees talk to each other at night.
All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.
Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.
Tiny bears live in drain pipes.
If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.
The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.
Everyone knows at least one secret language.
When nobody is looking, I can fly.
We are all held together by invisible threads.
Books get lonely too.
Sadness can be eaten.
I will always be there. ~ Raul Gutierrez

A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.
A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.
A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies. ~ J. Patrick Lewis

One killer exercise that's really great is pull-ups with your legs out level. That's my favourite. It's such functional core strength, and that's why I can climb up trees and down vines. ~ Bear Grylls

Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence. ~ Steve Jobs

I shouldn't have to do the foot-soldier work, Tahiri. Be my eyes and ears. I'd hate to have to use ch'hala trees. You're smarter than a tree
aren't you?
Darth Caedus to Tahiri Veila ~ Karen Traviss

God can and does use anything God chooses to get our attention.
Who's to say the hawk wasn't sent as an agent of grace to catch my wandering attention and quiet what Buddhists might call my "monkey mind," which is more often than not swinging wildly from branch to branch on intellectual and emotional trees.
On the way back down the hiking trail after my encounter with the hawk in Big Sky, I stopped thinking and started looking and listening. That's when I realized winter was turning into spring before me.
Change was happening.
Creation, and perhaps the Creator, was speaking.
I just needed to be outside to hear the voice. ~ Cathleen Falsani

Manicured grounds of well-hidden mansions. At any other time Doug would have been slowing the car, peering through the trees, on the lookout for interesting old architecture. Because Douglas Llewellyn was an architect, the senior partner ~ Kasey Michaels

At first it was simply that the spells would not come off. Or they would, but with the most unexpected results. He would try to move a small object, a salt cellar; it would overturn. He would try again and the salt would burst into flames. On the third try it might fly at his head, or mine. One day he attempted a simple messenger spell, and in the space of five minutes every spider, centipede, and earwig in the place came swarming in under the door. We began conducting his training outside after that.

"Attempting to levitate, he blew up an entire grove of trees in the park. A simple summoning, butterflies I think, and all the horses went crazy for an hour. Things soon reached such a state that whenever anything unusual happened within the Orëska grounds, we got the blame for it.

"Oh, but it was frustrating! In spite of all the blunders, all the destruction, I knew the power was there. I could feel it, even when he could not. For he did succeed now and then, but so erratically! Poor Seregil was devastated. I saw him brought to tears just trying to light a candle. Then there was the time he turned himself into a brick. ~ Lynn Flewelling

Alexandria," he began, the name lingering on the morning air as though it did not belong amongst trees, but instead somewhere much safer, much more enclosed.
"Christian," she breathed after her name had remained uncomfortably within his ears for a most distressing period of time.
The tears in her eyes had begun to fill quickly and more tears fell as she stared upon him expectantly, and he was quite suddenly aware that a drink of blood would be most desirable to ease the sheer uncomfortable edge he felt with her stare. ~ S.C. Parris