Kephart Quotes & Sayings

...no one really wants to hear from an Autumn Court reject who would like to offer his services. 'I'm here to help' didn't exactly work in their favor the last time.
Putting it lightly, I really didn't think this move through. I never said I was a genius. — Allana Kephart

Nature is not the number-one mystery, I've learned. It's the heart that takes top honors. — Beth Kephart

You obsess (but of course you obsess) until the joy is gone from that thing you'd loved, until your fury overwhelms your passion, until you no longer know how to sit with your back against a tree and write poetry that no one will ever see. — Beth Kephart

I know another New York Times bestselling author - Beth Kephart - she self-published one of her books. — Caroline Leavitt

The hemlock tree is named spruce-pine, while spruce is he-balsam, balsam itself is she-balsam, laurel is ivy, and rhododendron is laurel. — Horace Kephart

Throughout our lives friends enclose us like pairs of parentheses. They shift our boundaries; crater our terrain. They fume through the cracks of our tentative houses and parts of them always remain. Friendship asks the truth and wants the truth, hollows and fills, ages with us, and we through it. It cradles us like family. It is ecology and mystery and language - all three. Our grown-up friendships - especially the really meaningful ones- model for our children what we want them to have throughout their lives. — Beth Kephart

You may loan your last dollar to a friend; but never loan him your axe, unless you are certain that he knows how to use it. — Horace Kephart

But listen: The weight of the camera reminds me to see. It helps me decide against deciding that my world is overly familiar, already known. I look for cracks and fissures, for the new or newly announced. I look for water to run a different color in the stream, or for the sun to strike the pond in winter with delirious force. If I can't see, then I don't know, and if I don't know, I'm not writing, and while some may question the value of words, or of memoir in particular, I will again make this claim: Words rendered true spook and spur us. They expect of us. They expect for us. Photographs do the same thing: "Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees," said Paul Strand. — Beth Kephart

Nothing erodes [a mother's love]. It is not sand on a beach. It is the nuclear heart of things-hard as the rock of this earth. — Beth Kephart

Words are the weights which hold our history in place. — Beth Kephart

The man with the knapsack is never lost. No matter whither he may stray, his food and shelter are right with him, and home is wherever he may choose to stop. — Horace Kephart

Knicks and dull edges are abominations, so use knives and hatchets for nothing but they were made for. — Horace Kephart

In the school of the woods, there is no graduation day. — Horace Kephart

It is one of the blessings of wilderness life that it shows us how few things we need in order to be perfectly happy. — Horace Kephart

When I was a boy, that was all I wanted - to grow a pair of wings and get up into the sky. I had a basement full of failed wing projects. Boards and capes and motors, even a pile of found feathers I once tried to glue together with a bottle of Elmer's; you should have seen your grandmother's face. But I never got any higher than the backyard fence I'd launch from. I never got inside a cloud. Your raven did. — Beth Kephart

A man can stand almost any hardship by day, and be none the worse for it, provided he gets a comfortable nights rest; but without sound sleep he will soon go to pieces, no matter how gritty he may be. — Horace Kephart

Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting towards you. — Beth Kephart

In high school, my desire for friendship far outweighed my talent for it. — Beth Kephart

Stupid, infuriating, overgrown ass!" I hiss as I slam the back door behind me and stomp my foot for good measure. I'm home, I think to myself. I can finally throw a satisfying fit all by myself. Fuming, I stomp both of my feet on the kitchen floor again and again, picturing my cousin's face each time I bring my feet down. He is the most infuriating oaf on the face of the planet, and I want nothing more than to punch him. I'm still muttering to myself when I hear chuckling and jump in response.

Whirling around, I look up and find Flint standing by the coffee pot watching my display of temper and shaking his head. "I certainly hope you're not talking about me."

I scowl at him. "For once, no. You may be an infuriating ass, but I've never considered you stupid. Looks like sparking my temper isn't an exclusive ability of yours, after all. — Allana Kephart

I love to read, too. There's nothing like it. — Allana Kephart

Here's another change I've noticed: The dark is more than the sun dropping off, more than the moon and the stars. It's what you can't see that you hope you will see, what hasn't been that might be. — Beth Kephart

Imagine music gushing down the hollow places in your bones, and making you liquid, and giving you speed. Imagine music turning your body into a song. — Beth Kephart

How do you know when an apology is true - when it means something, or can change something, or will last outside the moment? — Beth Kephart

Were there language, I'd be my own lone letter. — Beth Kephart

I hold to fiction as a cure, or partial cure, or cause for hope, or essential distraction from the rain you wake up to, the doubts in your head, the daily desolation that you have not yet said what is most true, you have not yet crafted the story that reveals you. And therefore something waits. Therefore you must wake and you must write and you are not alone.
Your fiction is with you. — Beth Kephart

We grow too old to lose old friends ... — Beth Kephart

You know how a river goes on and on? That's my love for you. — Beth Kephart

His client needs him, he says. Needs him? But isn't he needed at home? — Beth Kephart

Step out from behind the words. When you're a writer you can imagine that the words speak for you and are you, but they're not. You are this living breathing bad hair day kind of person. — Beth Kephart

I'd thought he was stars and then I'd thought he was a fox. I had thought I'd been alone, but I hadn't. — Beth Kephart

Maybe all that matters is that they love each other, still, the way people who have known each other will always love each other. — Beth Kephart

I'd have given any- thing to know how Mom and Dad were, but you can't ask your parents such questions. You have to wait for them to tell you what it is that will happen next ... — Beth Kephart

Fox-Trot
By the stream the fox and she-fox stood
Nose to nose beneath the stars
Dancing the music of the woods.
The deer rapped a beat with their hooves,
The ravens sang from raven hearts
As by the stream the fox and she-fox stood.
The great owl called as a great owl would,
The squirrels all shimmied in the dark,
Dancing the music of the woods.
Then from the north a fierce wind blew
And broke the starry dance apart
By the stream where the fox and she-fox stood. — Beth Kephart

The night before, I'd gone overboard with my Lila poems, and maybe it's true that I was hoping that in them he'd see the genius of me, the beauty of my words in his hands. — Beth Kephart

The man who goes afoot, prepared to camp anywhere and in any weather, is the most independent fellow on earth. — Horace Kephart

I believe friends enclose us, like a pair of parentheses. Each one knows us differently, each sustains us in a different way. — Beth Kephart

Forgiveness, which is the place that every story turns, the chance we give each other. — Beth Kephart

You aren't happy," Estela says.
"I can't be happy," I say.
"Look at me, Kenzie."
"I'm looking at you, Estela."
"Do you know your own heart?"
"I don't know anything."
"Go," she says, "and think. And don't come back until you know. — Beth Kephart

To equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art. — Horace Kephart

Beauty is the worst kind of lie. — Beth Kephart