Sue Hubbell Quotes & Sayings

Got me as fussed as a fart in a mitten. — Sue Hubbell

[N]o such thing as objective writing, ... every inscription, every traveler's tale, every news account, every piece of technical writing, tells more about the author and his time than it does about the ostensible subject. — Sue Hubbell

Lepidopterists give the noun a gerund's push toward the verb, and say that butterflies are nectaring ... — Sue Hubbell

I like pulling on a baggy bee suit, forgetting myself and getting as close to the bees' lives as they will let me, remembering in the process that there is more to life than the merely human. — Sue Hubbell

I have stopped sleeping inside. A house is too small, too confining. I want the whole world, and the stars too. — Sue Hubbell

Then there is that other appeal, the stronger one, of spending, during certain parts of the year, a ten- or twelve- hour working day with bees, which are, when all is said and done, simply a bunch of bugs. But spending my days in close and intimate contact with creatures who are structured so differently from humans, and who get on with life in such a different way, is like being a visitor in an alien but ineffably engaging world. — Sue Hubbell

Beekeeping is farming for intellectuals. — Sue Hubbell

The only time I ever believed that I knew all there was to know about beekeeping was the first year I was keeping them. Every year since I've known less and less and have accepted the humbling truth that bees know more about making honey than I do. — Sue Hubbell

What is forever,' I asked. . . . Forever, it appeared, was a word made up by adults so they would not have to think about endings. . . . A friend who is an attorney told me not that long ago that a recent national survey of legal documents shows that 'forever' lasts about thirty years on average. But, if forever can mean until governments fall or lose interest, what does 700 million years mean when the whole history of governments, the very idea of governments, is subsumed into inconsequence by that span of time? — Sue Hubbell