Growing Like A Tree Quotes

For no reason that she could discern, she put down the novel and picked up her cell phone. She was lonely, yes, but had been so for as long as she cared to remember, and nothing seemed to be pressing that particular bruise, one of many, at the moment. Her loneliness was at a comfortable echelon: not growing like a tree, nor multiplying as a moss, but just simply there. A permanent, weathered embedded rock. A boulder in the wheat field. A bullet inside of a body, too dangerous to remove, around which tissue grows. ~ Ron Parsons

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be (Ben Jonson) ~ Aidan Chambers

Being pregnant was very much like falling in love. You are so open. You are so overjoyed. There's no words that can express having a baby growing inside of you so, of course, you want to scream it out and tell everyone. ~ Beyonce Knowles

Sometimes our need clouds our ability to develop perspective. Being needy is kind of like losing your keys. You become desperate and search everywhere. You search in places you know damn well what you are looking for could never be. The more frantic you become in trying to find them the less rational you are in your search. The less rational you become the more likely you'll be searching in a way that actually makes finding what you want more difficult. You go back again and again to where you want them to be, knowing that there is no way in hell that they are there. There is a lot of wasted effort. You lose perspective of your real goal, let's say it's go to the grocery store, and instead of getting what you need -nourishment, you frantically chase your tail growing more and more confused and angry and desperate. You are mad at your keys, you are mad at your coat pockets for not doing their job. You are irrational. You could just grab the spare set, run to the grocery store and get what you need, have a sandwich, calm down and search at your leisure. But you don't.

Where ARE your keys?! Your desperation is skewing your judgement. But you need to face it, YOUR keys are not in HIS pocket. You know your keys are not there. You have checked several times. They are not there. He is not responsible for your keys. You are. He doesn't want to be responsible for your keys. Here's the secret: YOU don't want to be responsible for your keys. If you did you would be searching ~ Tim Janes

Like a tree losing its leaves. I forget even the thing I was thinking. ~ Jenny Downham

She felt a lot like a tree in autumn: all her hopes and dreams, desires and comforts, drying up and falling away one by one until all that remained was the bare bones of her soul. She wasn't sure how much she liked her bare-bones self. ~ Annette Marie

Negative words spoken into our lives are like a vine, slowly creeping in, growing, expanding and entangling us until they're finally able to choke the life and dreams out. ~ Vonae Deyshawn

He had held out shakily, like a tree that had been hacked down to its breaking point. But that kiss was the last swing, the final impact, and he gave in finally, felled. ~ Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Barry, let me give you a history lesson, Ladybird Hope-style. When the Vietnamese got kids hooked on drugs and we had to fight a war to stop it, did we give in? No! We said, "Crack is wack!" and we made sure everybody could have guns instead of drugs. Back before the British were our friends, and they had a mean king who made us pay too much tax instead of just having hot princes who go to nightclubs, they wanted to keep us from bringing freedom to the people of Mexico and making it a state, and George Washington had to chop down that cherry tree and write the "Star-Spangled Banner," and that's the reason we fought World War II, and why we keep fighting, because those freedom-hating people out there want to take away our right to be rich and good-lookin' and have gated communities and designer sweatpants like the ones from my Ladybird Hope Don't Sweat it line, and they want us all to learn to speak Muslim and let the lawyers stop us from teaching about Adam and Eve and that will be the day that every child gets left behind. ~ Libba Bray

If you remove a treehouse from a tree, than it's just a shitty house. Sometimes when i'm in a shitty house, I like to imagine that it's in a tree, than it's like Woah, this house is amazing. ~ Demetri Martin

I dont think we're the type of band people look at and say, 'I want to grow up to be just like that'. We're like a train wreck. ~ Billy Corgan

Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. ~ Terry Pratchett

We're meant to stay connected to our hearts, you see. Feeling our feelings, present in the moments we're given. But we don't do that. And that's when we get in trouble ...
We mature and take responsibility for ourselves and others, and that's a good thing. But we're never meant to lose that alive quality, to get cut off from our true hearts. Growing up isn't the same thing as shutting down ...
We can fight it. We have to fight it. Because when our hearts shut down, we become mere shells of who we once were. We don't laugh - not honestly, not from the heart. We don't dream. We don't feel our feelings or use our gifts. We end up trying to just survive instead of live. It's like we've handed our hearts over to the enemy of our souls and said, 'Here you can have it. I'm giving up. ~ Denise Hildreth Jones

Like a mountain that's growing. ~ Neil Young

Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They'd find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles. ~ Holly Black

She could hear her hair growing. It sounded like something crumbling. A burnt thing crumbling. Coal. Toast. Moths crisped on a light bulb. She remembered reading somewhere that even after people died, their hair and nails kept growing. Like starlight, travelling through the universe long after the stars themselves had died. Like cities. Fizzy, effervescent, simulating the illusion of life while the planet they had plundered died around them. ~ Arundhati Roy

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it. It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall. Still its branches wave in the wind, as it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sunlight is reflected from its needles; it still affords an inaccessible crot ~ Henry David Thoreau

I am like a tree that looks dead to the world, but when you climb to the very top, you find bright green limbs sucking sap one hundred feet from the ground. And you discover the tree is very much alive, and is keeping its secret of life from the world. ~ Ned Hayes

Lola writes in her notebook: Leaf-fleas are even worse. Someone said, They don't bite people, because people don't have leaves. Lola writes, When the sun is beating down, they bite everything, even the wind. And we all have leaves. Leaves fall off when you stop growing, because childhood is all gone. And they grow back when you shrivel up, because love is all gone. Leaves spring up at will, writes Lola, just like tall grass. Two or three children in the village don't have any leaves, and those have a big childhood. A child like that is an only child, because it has a father and a mother who have been to school. The leaf-fleas turn older children into younger ones - a four-year-old into a three-year-old, a three-year-old into a one-year-old. Even a six-months-old, writes Lola, and even a newborn. And the more little brothers and sisters the leaf-fleas make, the smaller the childhood becomes. ~ Herta Muller

This garden is your soul. This mess is you! Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart. And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. To you it seems like a mess, but I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive - a living fractal. ~ Wm. Paul Young

Even after everyone had gone home, the house was filled with the good time they'd had, as if it could linger in the air like the voices and music lingered in memory. Mina wrapped the memory up and put it in her heart; there was a quiet gladness, deep like a tree and tall in her ~ Cynthia Voigt

It's always been this way. There were rumors about me even before I was born. It's why my mother never calls me Sobachka. She says it makes me sound like a mongrel."
My heart gave a little pang at that. I'd been called plenty of names growing up.
"I like mongrels," I said. "They have cute floppy ears."
"My ears are very dignified. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Your sister is really not loving Ms. Rothschild, huh." Peter still hasn't gotten the hang of calling Ms. Rothschild Trina, and he likely never will. In our neighborhood, none of the kids growing up called the adults by their first names. Everyone was Miss or Mrs. or Mr., except for Daddy, who was Dr.
"I wouldn't say Gogo dislikes Trina," I say. "She likes her; she just isn't used to her yet. You know how Trina is."
"True," he says. "I also know how your sister is. It took her forever to warm up to me."
"It wasn't forever. You're just used to people liking you from the very first minute they meet you." I give him a sidelong look. "Because you're so very charming." He scowls, because I don't say it like a compliment. "Gogo doesn't care about charm. She cares about real."
"Well, now she loves me," he says, all confidence. When I don't answer right away, he says, "Right? Doesn't she?"
I laugh. "She does. ~ Jenny Han

A mustache really defines your face. My dad had a mustache when I was growing up, and I can still remember when he shaved it, he looked like a completely different person. ~ Jason Sudeikis

Told you," said Mick. "Things comin' together. We set off lookin' for the Utz kids an' find a tree full o' everybody. That's magic, too."
"It's like a story."
"Same thing. The universe don't like plot. Story is magic's way o' telling the universe to sod off."
"That's good then, right?" said Scott. After this episode with Emily, he was ready for some optimism. "Magic wants us all to live happily ever after."
"Not necessarily," Mick answered. "Magic likes a good tragedy, too. ~ Adam Rex

3. There is a good scared and a bad scared. Try to learn the difference. The wrong kind of fear will feel like driving into a storm, stepping onto a boat and feeling it begin to sink, knowing you don't have a life jacket. If that's what you feel, something needs to change. But the right kind of fear is more like meeting a friend of a friend you've been told you would love, or visiting a new country you don't know well- you might not understand the language, but you still want to learn. Good scared means you're growing. Know the difference. 4. ~ Elizabeth McNamara

Growing up working with my dad, I really had no interest in doing the actual work, so I was always like drawing on the wood, doing stuff like that. It just has a real hands-on approach. ~ Eddie Martinez

Do you think Bubbles wants Chinese food
because it's made out of cats?" Genevieve questioned, shoveling a big bite into her mouth.
"Genevieve, that's just gross and wrong. Don't say things like that. Bubbles is a dog, and their stomachs are bottomless pits. They'll eat anything and
everything in sight."
Genevieve quickly swallowed. "Well, Bobby said in China they eat cats."
"Gen, I assure you, we.are.not eating cats," I responded slowly trying to make sure another food wasn't crossed off her 'will eat' list. It was ever growing shorter.
"All lies!" Genevieve proclaimed, sticking her fork high in the air with a piece of chicken, only to have it fall, never touching the floor. "See? Cat! ~ Ottilie Weber

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing - oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit. ~ Janet Frame

Man is like a tree. If you stand in front of a tree and watch it incessantly, to see how it grows, and to see how much it has grown, you will see nothing at all. But tend it at all times, prune the runners and keep it free of beetles and worms, and all in good time-it will come into its growth. It is the same with man: all that is necessary is for him to overcome his obstacles, and he will thrive and grow. But it is not right to examine him hour after hour to see how much has already been added to his stature. ~ Martin Buber

Trees are much like human beings and enjoy each other's company. Only a few love to be alone. ~ Jens Jensen

Content is to the mind like moss to a tree; it bindeth it up so as to stop its growth. ~ Charles Montagu, 1st Earl Of Halifax

Sometimes I come across a tree which seems like Buddha or Jesus: loving, compassionate, still, unambitious, enlightened, in eternal meditation, giving pleasure to a pilgrim, shade to a cow, berries to a bird, beauty to its surroundings, health to its neighbors, branches for the fire, leaves for the soil, asking nothing in return, in total harmony with the wind and the rain. How much can I learn from a tree? The tree is my church, the tree is my temple, the tree is my mantra, the tree is my poem and my prayer. ~ Satish Kumar

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow. ~ Thornton Wilder

He didn't seem to have suffered. His face looked very peaceful. It was like - a windless day at the end of autumn, when a single leaf falls from a tree. But maybe that's not a good way to put it. ~ Haruki Murakami

I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams. My whole being could now be summed up in my voice―an insane, absolute record. The force that, out of loneliness, brings two individuals together to procreate has its roots in this same insanity which exists in everyone and which is mingled with a sense of regret, tending gradually toward death...Only death does not tell lies! The presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life. ~ Sadegh Hedayat

He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which had commanded him to seek rest under this tree, and he had neither preferred self-castigation, offerings, ablutions, nor prayer, neither food nor drink, neither sleep nor dream, he had obeyed the voice. To obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary. ~ Hermann Hesse

How they are all about, these gentlemen
In chamberlains' apparel, stocked and laced,
Like night around their order's star and gem
And growing ever darker, stony-faced,
And these, their ladies, fragile, wan, but propped
High by their bodice, one hand loosely dropped,
Small like its collar, on the toy King-Charles:
How they surround each one of these who stopped
To read and contemplate the objects d'art,
Of which some pieces still are theirs, not ours.
Whit exquisite decorum they allow us
A life of whose dimensions we seem sure
And which they cannot grasp. They were alive
To bloom, that is be fair; we, to mature,
That is to be of darkness and to strive. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down. ~ Rudyard Kipling

The Intellectual

The intellectual is always showing off;
the lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away, afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love is to drown in the sea.
Intellectuals plan their repose;
lovers are ashamed to rest.
The lover is always alone,
even surrounded with people;
like water and oil, he remains apart.
The man who goes to the trouble
of giving advice to a lover
get's nothing. He's mocked by passion.
Love is like musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and lovers are its shade. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

The forest stretched on seemingly forever with the most monotonous predictability, each tree just like the next - trunk, branches, leaves; trunk, branches, leaves. Of course a tree would have taken a different view of the matter. We all tend to see the way others are alike and how we differ, and it's probably just as well we do, since that prevents a great deal of confusion. But perhaps we should remind ourselves from time to time that ours is a very partial view, and that the world is full of a great deal more variety than we ever manage to take in. ~ Thomas M. Disch

Thank you for saying you love me. Not just for saying it, but for being brave enough to tell me how you feel.
I'm not as brave as you. And maybe I'm a little more damaged than you...carrying more baggage. I'm not ready to tell you I love you, but you do need to know that you've been the best part of my life since we met, and I can't imagine moving on without you.
I want to see where this goes. And once you're out of here, I want to date. Really date.
Until then, we need to cool off. You're really good at making me take chances. That sounds like I'm blaming you - I'm not. It's a good thing. You make me brave and wild. You excite me, and make me exciting. I don't regret the risks we've taken, but I can't take any more for a while.
And we have to talk about what happened under the poplar tree the other night. You said some things that make me want to take a big step back from this.
You asked me to do something I'd never ask of you. I didn't mean to sound cruel, bringing up your injury like I did, but it doesn't make sense that you say you love me, but want me to risk the chance to do a job I've been called to do. We need to figure that out, ok?
Thanks for reading all this. It's what's been on my mind all week, and I needed to get it off my chest. ~ Peter Styles

Several years ago, I realized that I didn't want to spend all my life in medicine. It had me in a sort of spiritual box, like a plant whose roots are getting crowded. I felt I wasn't growing. So I promised myself that I would quit while I still had the energy to get involved in something new. There's nothing wrong with medicine. There's more paperwork, more lawsuits, less understanding between doctors and patients. But it's still a great business. But not for me - not any longer. ~ Richard S. Weeder

They're checking IDs," he says, craning his neck to see what's holding us up.
I pull mine out of my pocket, and he tilts his head to see the picture on it. "You look different."
"It's two years old." I start to lower my arm, and he puts his hand on mine to stop me.
"That's how you used to wear your hair," he says, still examining it, holding my wrist to keep it where he can see it. "The bangs . . . I always liked the bangs. I was surprised you didn't have them anymore."
I flush. "I grew them out a couple of summers ago."
He releases my arm. "Did you get a good essay out of it? 'What I Did Last Summer'?"
"I'm saving it for my college essay. 'How Growing Out My Bangs Taught Me Compassion.'"
"Work a third-world country in there somehow," he says. "Colleges like to see some global awareness."
The line takes us through the front door.
"Progress," Finn says.
"Look." I point to a kid who's clutching some beads and murmuring to himself. "Is he actually praying right now?"
"There are no atheists in the SAT line."
"Remind me to ask him in a few weeks if it helped."
"I'm guessing the success of his prayers will correspond to the number of hours he spent studying. ~ Claire LaZebnik

The leash snaps loose and trails after the little white dog like a kite streamer; then the knot closes, sealing shut. In seconds, an instant, there's no dog, no leash. No sound in the air.

Then Marcus says, 'The tree just ate the dead dog.'

'Yes,' says Jose. 'So it seems. ~ Veronica Rossi

Moonless nights haunt me. They evoke my once carefree life when I dreamed without doubt to what my future could be. I yearn for a time when my mother's tree swayed beneath the dusk like an amber sea, but the past is locked without a key. Never to return - only flee. ~ H.S. Crow

Here in This New Place Is Your Memory"

For P. Smith

Here in this new place it is reasonable to own
a dog or to tell somebody you've been needing
them less. A tree is always on a journey
toward becoming a better tree, limbs waving like eager sails
on an anchored ship. It is sad when you understand that nothing
else can come along. It is worse when you care
a little less. What you love requires a prioritized list, thus
that nothing is equal but to itself. And you are equal to a dangerous
ivory moon. Here there is sacrifice on the doorstep
of beauty. Here there is an altar made of sand. It dismantles
no less than itself to please the sea. ~ Wendy Xu

Or perhaps it is because it is so NECESSARY for you to win. It is like a drowning man catching at a straw. You yourself will agree that, unless he were drowning he would not mistake a straw for the trunk of a tree. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies. ~ Stephen Fry

There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity. ~ Washington Irving