Brants Orchard Quotes

That apple orchard is still in flower," I told myself. "Time has passed it by, leaving it behind in a moment that does not pass. An idea that seems as insane as the beauty of those flowering trees that will never bear fruit. But to believe in it gives a supreme meaning to our lives, our encounters, our loves."
Then I caught myself mentally addressing Kira, as on so many occasions during these last twenty years.
The truth is, I have never stopped walking beside her along an endless corridor lined with snow-clad boughts. ~ Andrei Makine

My Last Duchess

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace - all and each
Would draw from her ~ Robert Browning

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

You'll never be alone in the bone orchard. ~ Elvis Costello

Still, he could feel a fine cord stretched between them, a thin luminous fiber that ran from his chest all the way across the continent and forked into theirs. Never before had he lived through a fever without his mother; when he'd been sick in Debrecen she'd taken the train to be with him. Never had he finished a year at school without knowing that soon he'd be home with his father, working beside him in the lumberyard and walking through the fields with him in the evening. Now there was another filament, one that linked him to Klara. And Paris was her home, this place thousands of kilometers from his own. He felt the stirring of a new ache, something like homesickness but located deeper in his mind; it was an ache for the tie when his heart had been a simple and satisfied thing, small as the green apples that grew in his father's orchard. ~ Julie Orringer

When Christopher finished, there was a moment of silence.
Leo looked at Cam expectantly. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Now is the time when you dredge up one of your blasted Romany sayings. Something about roosters laying eggs, or pigs dancing in the orchard. It's what you always do. Let's have it."
Cam gave him a sardonic glance. "I can't think of one right now."
"By God, I've had to listen to hundreds of them. And Phelan doesn't have to hear even one? ~ Lisa Kleypas

Got me thinking. I know what I love too. Family and friends. All the ones here and all ones gone. I love my dog, and this orchard, and a crumbledown house.

Funny thing. The way that feels. It's not dark, unlucky, or stupid. Tell you what. Stupid can go sit on the head of a pink somewhere.

Knowing what you love is smart." -Mason ~ Leslie Connor

You would not go into an apple orchard and eat the weeds so why would you go into your day and feast on worries?. ~ Pat McBride

In April the true labor began. He rose before dawn and was at work in the trees as the sun rose. On a ladder, with his shears, maneuvering into the farthest reaches of the understories. At times whistling, at times muttering to himself. But mostly silent. Always working in that calm, deliberate way that made it impossible to imagine that he would ever complete the row, not to mention the entire orchard, in time. How could he afford to be so careful? It's that it was just possible, but barely. The design, the organization he achieved in the rows, in each tree, pleased him like nothing else. It was his passion, his whole life. ~ Amanda Coplin

Our Valley

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life. ~ Philip Levine

The orchard laid; When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air, I'll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair. ENT. When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

He grasped her chin, tilted her face toward him, and kissed her deeply. She was wearing no perfume today, but her skin carried a faint scent that reminded him of apples. It could be because they had been living in an apple orchard, but Michael knew it was simply the way her skin naturally smelled. When he withdrew, he smiled at the attractive flush that darkened her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. "If you had looked at me like that the first time I saw you," he murmured, "I would have flung you over my shoulder and carried you off to the nearest church. No man can have a woman look at him like that and not want to marry her. ~ Elizabeth Camden

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter. ~ Rumi

The first role I played was Madame Ranevsky in 'The Cherry Orchard.' ~ Lesley Nicol

Cat wrinkled her nose. "No, thank you."
"Take," the rais told her. "Is good." He picked one up and held it out, and when she hesitated, thrust it at her with greater insistence. "With my people, hosbitality important. To refuse is insult."
She took a small bite. Sweetness flooded her mouth so that she gasped. It was not in the least what she had expected, for it tasted remarkably like the preserved medlars the cook bottled each autumn from Kenegie's orchard. "Oh..." She took the rest whole, saliva breaking from the corner of her mouth.
Al-Andalusi looked on, eyebrow cocked sardonically. "Is fig," he said. "In some tradition it was the friut Eve gave to Adam from the Tree of Knowledge."
"In the Bible that was an apple!"
"In our tradition, according to the Qu'ran, it was apple also. And when Adam swallowed mouthful od fruit, it stuk in throat and made lump all men have."
"The Adam's apple!" Cat cried, astonished. "We call it that as well."
"We are, perhaps, not such strangers to each other as you think. ~ Jane Johnson

I walk outside and the green on the trees seems greener, so potent I can almost taste it. Maybe I can taste it, and it is like the grass I decided to chew when I was a child just to see what it was like. I almost fall down the stairs because of the swaying and burst into laughter when the grass tickles my bare feet. I wander toward the orchard.
"Four!" I call out. Why am I calling out a number? Oh yes. Because that's his name. I call out again. "Four! Where are you?"
"Tris?" says a voice from the trees on my right. It almost sounds like the tree is talking to me. I giggle, but of course it's just Tobias, ducking under a branch.
I run toward him, and the ground lurches to the side, so I almost fall. His hand touches my waist, steadies me. The touch sends a shock through my body, and all my insides burn like his fingers ignited them. I pull closer to him, pressing my body against his, and lift my head to kiss him.
"What did they--" he starts, but I stop him with my lips. He kisses me back, but too quickly, so I sigh heavily.
"That was lame," I say. "Okay, no it wasn't, but…"
I stand on my tiptoes to kiss him again, and he presses his finger to my lips to stop me.
"Tris," he says. "What did they do to you? You're acting like a lunatic."
"That's not very nice of you to say," I say. "They put me in a good mood, that's all. And now I really want to kiss you, so if you could just relax--"
"I'm not going to kiss you. I'm going to figure ou ~ Veronica Roth

He'd stepped on something. He took a step back and knelt and parted the grass with his hands. It was an apple. He picked it up and held it to the light. Hard and brown and shriveled. He wiped it with the cloth and bit into it. Dry and almost tasteless. But an apple. He ate it entire, seeds and all. He held the stem between his thumb and forefinger and let it drop. Then he went treading softly through the grass. His feet still wrapped in the remnants of the coat and the shreds of tarp and he sat and untied them and stuffed the wrappings in his pocket and went down the rows barefoot. By the time he got to the bottom of the orchard he had four more apples and he put them in his pocket and came back. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. ~ O. Henry

The old folktales from Mexico often have the same beginning. "One day a man met the devil in the road," or "The devil came upon a man in the desert." This is not an old story, but I am here to tell you, I met the devil in an orchard in December. He offered me gold; he gave me pleasure; he fooled me twice and then he set me on fire. ~ Elise Forier Edie

In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard seat And birds and flowers once more to greet ... ~ William Wordsworth

So Aunt Jillian quit her job and hitched her wagon to Brant. Lived off food stamps and her savings account in a spare bedroom at Brant's house for two years. Then she brokered their first deal and all of the Sharps moved their bank account decimals seven places to the right. ~ Alessandra Torre

When I started looking for pointed shoes, I used to go to Fairfax on Orchard Street in New York City, one of those little pushcart guys. I'd say, 'You got any pointy shoes?' They would go way, way in the back and come back with a dusty box, blow the dust off the top, and say, 'What do you want with these things? Give me twenty bucks. Go on, get outta here!' And that was the beginning. ~ Tom Waits

The shells had landed on the cobblestone road.
"Sonsofbitches," Wiseman muttered.
We looked up and grinned at each other.
"Here they come again!"
Sitting in an inch of water. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, held my breath, and clutched my elbows with my arms around my knees.
Three more shells came in, low and angry, and burst in the orchard.
"They're walking 'em towards us," I whispered.
I felt as if a giant with exploding iron fingers were looking for me, tearing up the ground as he came. I wanted to strike at him, to kill him, to stop him before he ripped into me, but I could do nothing. Sit and take it, sit and take it. The giant raked the orchard and tore up the roads and stumbled toward us in a terrible blind wrath as we sat in our hole with our heads between our legs and curses on our lips. ~ David Kenyon Webster

No one lives on the top of the mountain. It's fine to go there occasionally -for inspiration, for new perspectives. But you have to come down. Life is lived in the valleys. That's where the farms and gardens and orchards are, and where the plowing and the work is done. That's where you apply the visions you may have glimpsed from the peaks. ~ Arthur Gordon Webster

And she saw herself cooking, baking, canning and working a little in the orchard. ~ Robyn Carr

The way God squandered Himself had always hurt her; and annoyed her too. The sky full of wings and only the shepherds awake. That golden voice speaking and only a few fishermen there to hear; and perhaps some of the words He spoke carried away on the wind or lost in the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat. A thousand blossoms shimmering over the orchard, each a world of wonder all to itself, and then the whole thing blown away on a southwest gale as though the delicate little worlds were of no value at all. Well, of all the spendthrifts, she would think and then pull herself up. It was not for her to criticize the ways of Almighty God; if He liked to go to all that trouble over the snowflakes, millions and millions of them, their intricate patterns too small to be seen by human eyes, and melting as soon as made, that was His affair and not hers. All she could do about it was to catch in her window, and save from entire waste, as much of the squandered beauty as she could. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

The wind gusted through the palms and the fronds rubbed together like crumpled tissue paper. It carried the scent of manure and gasoline and the orchard behind the fence. It blew under the thin material of my dress, and I shivered when it slipped over my skin. I envied its reckless abandon, the way it touched without fear. ~ Heather Demetrios

Someone had cleared that hillside once to make an orchard that had fallen into ruin and was now only twisted silver branches and split trunks. I sat there and continued to watch the sky as, out of nowhere, great solid-looking clouds built hot stacks and cotton cones. I was sixteen years old. ~ Louise Erdrich

They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Bundled in my shawl and uniform, I might have been partaking in any one of Mrs. Westcliffe's permitted after-supper al fresco activities, like:
Strolling to the edge of the rose garden to admire the sunset.
Strolling to the edge of the orchard to admire the sunset.
Strolling to the edge of the bridge to admire the sunset.
At England's foremost educational opportunity for young women, strolling to the brink of things was allowed. Leaving the green-plunging beyond brinks-was not. ~ Shana Abe

While he digs he is free to let his mind wander, and he dreams his kingdom of pear trees in the orchard across to his left, growing skywards, gnarling, putting forth fat green soft fruits with ease each year. The trees that already grow in the orchards he loves almost as women in his life; the Catherine pear, the Chesil or pear Nouglas, the great Kentish pear, the Ruddick, the Red Garnet, the Norwich, the Windsor, the little green pear ripe at Kingsdon Feast; all thriving where they were planted in his father's ground at Lytes Cary before the management of the estate became his own responsibility as the eldest son. So much has happened these last six years since his father handed over and left for his house in Sherborne: there have been births and deaths - Anys herself was taken from him only last year. But the pear trees live on, reliably flowering and yielding variable quantities as an annual crop that defines the estate, and he has plans to add more. ~ Jane Borodale

Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions ― a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own orchard ― can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger's-breadth from goodness. ~ Virginia Woolf

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

There is much I do not understand about the way humans think of punishment and forgiveness, and what happens to sinners when they die. I wish Jessamine was here to explain it to me, for the plants do not speak of heaven and hell. They speak only of the turning of the seasons and of starting anew each spring. Never despair, they counsel, for the orchard that is barren one season may bear fruit in plenty in the next. ~ Maryrose Wood

Never May the Fruit Be Plucked"

Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I was drawn on. Conscious now that something needed doing, I moved ever higher on the land. Here entering an orchard of immense and archaic beauty. I say orchard: The trees were dense in one place, scattered in another, as though planted by random throw, but all were heavy trunked and capaciously limbed, and they were fruit trees, every one of them. Apples, gold-skinned apricots, immaculate pears. The leaves about them were thick and cool and stirred at my approach; touched with a finger, they imparted a palpable rhythm.

It took a long while to traverse the orchard. I began to feel hungry but didn't pause; though all this fruit appeared perfectly available, I felt prodded to appear before the master. The place had a master! Realizing this, I know he was already aware of me - comforting and fearful knowledge. Still I wanted to see him. The farther I went the more I seemed to know or remember abut him - the way he'd planted this orchard, walking over the hills, casting seed from his hand. I kept moving. ~ Leif Enger

This story was written many moons ago under an apple tree in an orchard in Kent, which is one of England's prettiest counties . . . I had read at least twenty of the [fairy tales] when I noticed something that had never struck me before--I suppose because I had always taken it for granted. All the princesses, apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair. This struck me as most unfair, and suddenly I began to wonder just how many handsome young princes would have asked a king for the hand of his daughter if that daughter had happened to be gawky, snub-nosed, and freckled, with shortish mouse-colored hair? None, I suspected. They would all have been of chasing after some lissome Royal Highness with large blue eyes and yards of golden hair and probably nothing whatever between her ears! It was in that moment that a story about a princess who turned out to be ordinary jumped into my mind, and the very next morning I took my pencil box and a large rough-notebook down to the orchard and, having settled myself under an apple tree in full bloom, began to write . . . the day was warm and windless and without a cloud in the sky. A perfect day and a perfect place to write a fairy story. ~ M.M. Kaye

I took a cautious step inside, marveling at the sight before me. A vast conservatory awaited, or what 'once' was a conservatory. Sunlight beamed through the enormous glass roof. I realized that its position at the center of the house precluded its visibility from below. In awe, my heart beating wildly, I lingered in an arbor covered with bright pink bougainvillea, with a trunk so thick, it was larger than my waist. Most of it had died off, but a single healthy vine remained, and it burst with magenta blossoms. I could smell citrus warming in the sunlight, and I immediately noticed the source: an old potted lemon tree in the far corner. 'This must have been Lady Anna's.'
I walked along the leaf-strewn pathway to a table that had clearly once showcased dozens of orchids. Now it was an orchid graveyard. Only their brown, shriveled stems remained, but I could imagine how they'd looked in their prime. I smiled when I picked up a tag from one of the pots. 'Lady Fiona Bixby. She must have given them her own names.' Perhaps there hadn't been anything sinister going on in the orchard, after all. Lady Anna was clearly a creative spirit, and maybe that played out in her gardens and the names she gave to her flowers and trees. ~ Sarah Jio

I miss my old paycheck and the sense of pride, power, and worth that it gave me. I make a lot less money now. A lot less. But what I've lost in dollars, I've gained in time. I have time in the afternoons now to help Charlie and Lucy with their homework, to play Wii with them, to watch Charlie's soccer games, to take a nap with Linus. I can't wait to spend afternoons snowboarding. I have time to paint a portrait of Lucy (my only child who will sit still long enough) or the apples we picked at the local orchard. I have time to read novels, to meditate, to watch the deer walk across the backyard, to have dinner every night with my family. Less money, more time. So far, the trade-off has been worth every penny. ~ Lisa Genova

Sometimes our thoughts turn back toward a corner in a forest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard powdered with flowers, seen but a single time on some happy day, yet remaining in our hearts and leaving in soul and body an unappeased desire which is not to be forgotten, a feeling that we have just rubbed elbows with happiness. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Nobody is going to invest a fortune into good orchard land, all the farming equipment necessary, the fertilizer, the seedlings, the nonstop Herculean work effort needed to grow apples, then bring them to the fruit stand for people to take home for free. ~ Ted Nugent

Snub end of a dismal year,
deep in the dwarf orchard,
The sky with its undercoat of blackwash and point stars,
I stand in the dark and answer to
My life, this shirt I want to take off,
which is on fire ... ~ Charles Wright

I chose you because you're an orchard of ripe fruits, and I want to lay my sufferings in the shadows of your arms, of your belly. I chose you because your tears remind me of September rain. Because of the sun I see in your pupils. You cannot run now, can you? You have found your home. Do you feel the darkness in the hollow of your plexus? Don't you understand? Your darkness was your secret, and she whispers to mine. ~ Pauline Albanese

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