Out Of The Woods Quotes & Sayings

Her dad brought his hands together and popped a knuckle.
"Trevor," Frances said soothingly, rubbing her hand on his back. But she was looking hard at me over her glasses, telling me upstanding citizens did not act this way.
When we were kids, that look from Frances could make Lori and her brother behave, and sometimes even my brothers, but I never seemed to get the message.
"I saw you coming out of the woods," Lori's dad shouted at me. "Together!"
"We weren't rolling in the leaves or anything. Look, no evidence." I put my other hand on Lori's other shoulder and turned her around backward, hoping against hope
she didn't have scratches from the tree on her bare back, or bark on her butt.
"Get your hands off my daughter. — Jennifer Echols

It's fair to say when you go out and walk in the woods or on a beach, the most conspicuous forms of life you will see are plants and animals, and certainly there's a huge diversity of those types of organisms, perhaps 10 million animal species and several hundred thousand plant species. — Andrew H. Knoll

We are shut up in school and college recitation rooms for ten to fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse or a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I start early in the morning. I'm usually out in the woods with the dog as soon as it gets light; then I drink a whole lot of tea and start as early as I can, and I go as long as I can. — Robert Stone

In tangled wreath, in clustered gleaming stars,
In floating, curling sprays,
The golden flower comes shining though the woods
These February days;
Forth go all hearts, all hands, from out the town,
To bring her gayly in,
This wild, sweet Princess of far Florida -
The yellow jessamine. — Constance Fenimore Woolson

The woods played on our imaginations the most after dark, in our dorms as we were trying to fall asleep. You almost thought then you could hear the wind rustling the branches, and talking about it seemed only to make things worse. I remember one night, when we were furious with Marge K.
she'd done something really embarrassing to us during the day
we chose to punish her by hauling her out of bed, holding her face against the window pane and ordering her to look up at the woods. At first she kept her eyes screwed shut, but we twisted her arms and forced open her eyelids until she saw the distant outline against the moonlit sky, and that was enough to ensure for her a sobbing night of terror. — Kazuo Ishiguro

We're not out of the woods yet, people," I said, and grimaced, my eyes cheating toward the trees growing on all sides. "No pun intended. Sloane, were you being serious when you said that most of that was Demi's blood? Because I'm not quite ready to condone beating her to death." "She got a nosebleed," said Sloane, reaching forward and taking my hand in hers. Her fingers left red stains on my skin. "Sure, I had to punch her four or five times to make that happen, but nosebleeds are a normal part of being a traitorous bitch who goes over to the dark side at the first sign of trouble. — Seanan McGuire

One June evening, when the orchards were pink-blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom. — L.M. Montgomery

I learned a long time ago that life introduces young people to situations they are in no way prepared for, even good girls, lucky girls who want for nothing. Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds. — Roxane Gay

We've seen what happened in Libya, what a disaster that's been driven by Hillary Clinton, and the disaster in Syria and almost disaster in Egypt. What a close call that's been. We're not out of the woods yet with Egypt. — Jeff Sessions

Virtually, Finnish woods are stripped so bare, so sold out and first and foremost, so long way off from genuine diverse natural forest, that the resources of language will not permit excessive words. Finnish forest economy has been compared to the ravaging of rain forests. Nevertheless, the noteworthy difference is that there is a half or two thirds left from rain forests, but from Finnish forests there is left - excluding arctic Lapland - 0,6 per cent. — Pentti Linkola

Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, booming on in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day so bright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, through the fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the hay, through the chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through the rock, among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly with him: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death! — Charles Dickens

Mother had wandered off - where? Was she out on the highway, ready to be picked up by anyone who might come driving by? Was she still suffering a hysterical reaction, would the shock of what she had done cause her to blurt out the truth to whoever came along and found her? Had she actually run away, or was she merely in a daze? Maybe she'd gone down past the woods back of the house, along the narrow ten-acre strip of their land which stretched off into the swamp. Wouldn't it be better to search for her first? Norman sighed and shook — Robert Bloch

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he's gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone. — Mary Oliver

Come on! Come on!" Leo urged. He made the mistake of glancing back. Only a stone's throw away, the first Maenad appeared out of the woods. Her eyes were pure red. She grinned with a mouth full of fangs, then slashed her talon fingernails at the nearest tree and sliced it in half. Little tornadoes of leaves swirled around her as if even the air were going crazy. "Come, demigod!" she called. "Join me in the revels!" Leo knew it was insane, but her words buzzed in his ears. Part of him wanted to run toward her. Whoa, boy, he told himself. Golden Rule for Demigods: Thou shalt not Hokey Pokey with psychos. Still, he took a step toward the Maenad. — Rick Riordan

Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth. — J.P. Donleavy

The first tree shudder and fall, far off in the distance. Then he heard his mother call out the kitchen window: "Luke! Inside. Now." He had never disobeyed the order to hide. Even as a toddler, barely able to walk in the backyard's tall grass, he had somehow understood the fear in his mother's voice. But on this day, the day they began taking the woods away, he hesitated. He took one extra breath of the fresh air, scented with clover and honeysuckle and - coming from far away - — Margaret Peterson Haddix

From the 18th to the 20th Century it was the boast that human thought had at least come out of the dark woods of medieval superstition, credulity and obscurantism, into the sunshine of clear thinking where the dry breezes of skepticism blow unhindered. 'Fell the trees and level the hills that still obscure the view; let the winds drive off the mist' - they said. But now that much of this work has been accomplished it is beginning to be felt that there is no shade in all these flat plains of perpetual parching wind and sunshine, and through this desert no flooding Nile flows. There are those who, secretly, would like, if they could, to reconstruct the dim, wet, haunted woods before they die of thirst. — Nanamoli Thera

When Lea died at the Institute ... I was in a dark woods, blind and lost as Dante before Virgil. But Quinn helped me. Here voice calling me out of misery. She became my home. As she puts it, 'Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.' Find your home, Darrow. It may not be in the past. But find it, and you'll never be lost again. — Pierce Brown

Finally the gorilla queen had had enough. She wrote a letter to the editor of Baboons' Home Journal and asked for advice. The editor printed her letter (but in order to protect her privacy, changed her name from 'Gorilla Queen' to 'Worried in the Royal Castle'). The editor suggested hiring a local hunter to take the little troublemaker out into the woods, kill him, and cut his heart out and bring it back. 'Check page 44 of last month's issue for delicious recipes, at just pennies a serving!' she concluded. — Gregory Maguire

Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns Into a royal court with green festoons The banks of dark lagoons. — Henry Timrod

It seemed as if the valley were not always girded by woods, growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places now, rising out of the ground to offer their condolences. He almost waved away the tangible beauty of the hour like a crowd of persistent friends, almost said to the lingering afterglow, 'thank you, thank you, I'll be all right.' — Boris Pasternak

We are never out of the woods, because we are always going to be fighting for something. — Taylor Swift

The ban doesn't have anything to do with Livestrong or my ability to work in [the cancer] community. Perhaps it speeds it up. I don't know the examples in Great Britain of athletes who have fallen. I know the examples in the United States - the Tiger Woods, the Michael Vicks, even the Bill Clintons - people who are still out there able to work. — Lance Armstrong

So, what exactly does 'patrolling' entail?"
She shrugged. "Making sure the woods are clean of supes."
"Why would there be soup in-oh, 'supes'? Like for 'supernaturals'? Is that what you guys call us?"
Izzy didn't turn around, and it could have just been a trick of the light, but I thought the tips of her ears pinkened. "It's just something I made up," she mumbled, and I was very glad she had her back to me as a smile broke out over my face.
"I like that."
She spun around then, and I made sure my expression was deadly serious. "I mean it," I told her. "You know what we call ourselves, right? Prodigium." I made a derisive snort. "The only thing lamer and more pretentious than Latin is made-up Latin. — Rachel Hawkins

Villages and woods, meadows and chateaux, pass across the moving scene, out of which the whistling of locomotives throws sharp notes. These faint, piercing sounds, together with the yelping and barking of dogs, are the only noises that reach one through the depths of the upper air. The human voice cannot mount up into these boundless solitudes. Human beings look like ants along the white lines that are highways; and the rows of houses look like children's playthings. — Alberto Santos-Dumont

You still think I've gone cracked in the head," Ben said, amused. "Listen, if tomorrow we pulled into Biren and someone told you there were shamble-men in the woods, would you believe them?" My father shook his head. "What if two people told you?" Another shake.
Ben leaned forward on his stump. "What if a dozen people told you, with perfect earnestness, that shamble-men were out in the fields, eating-"
"Of course I wouldn't believe them," my father said, irritated. "It's ridiculous."
"Of course it is," Ben agreed, raising a finger. "But the real question is this: Would you go into the woods? — Patrick Rothfuss

I am an orphan, alone: nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons. — C. G. Jung

The whole "lets find Bigfoot" thing seems a little ill-planned to me, personally. Granted, my perspective is different than that of non-wizards, but marching out into the woods looking for a very large and very powerful creature by blasting out what you're pretty sure are territorial challenges to fight (or else mating calls) seems ... somewhat unwise.
I mean, if there's no Bigfoot, no problem. But what if you're standing there, screaming "Bring it on!" and find a Bigfoot?
Worse yet, what if he finds you?
Even worse, what if you were screaming "Do me, baby!" and he finds you then?
Is it me? Am I carzy? Or does the whole thing just seem like a recipe for trouble? — Jim Butcher

I've been playing sports since I was five. For me, there's no happier moment than when I'm out in the woods on a bike or a run. I feel on top of the world, and nothing else makes me feel that way. — Daniel Humm

the logic of fairy tales was that there was no logic: bad things happened to the innocent, children were set out in the woods by their parents, fear walked hand in hand with experience, a wish spoken aloud could make it so. I — Alice Hoffman

The best days I have are usually days where I'm out in the woods and something happens, like I see an amazing animal like a fox, or I get a glimpse of a wild pig or something that I never see. Or crazy things happen. — Amy Ray

And we turned off and 30 miles south they're standing in the middle of our road blocking our way, stopped the car, got out, took us through the path in the woods, where the craft was on the ground. — Betty Hill

Go out there into the glory of the woods. See God in every particle of them expressing glory and strength and power, tenderness and protection. Know that they are God expressing God made manifest. — Emily Carr

You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer's wood, or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is of meat; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, but have been out every day of their lives; greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so; they never took to the way of writing. Look at their fields, and imagine what they might write, if ever they should put pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the face of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, and harrowing, and plowing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out, and over and over, again and again, erasing what they had already written for want of parchment. — Henry David Thoreau

Myself
a prince by fortune of my birth,
Near to the king in blood, and near in love
Till you did make him misinterpret me
Have stooped my neck under your injuries
And sighed my English breath in foreign clouds,
Eating the bitter bread of banishment,
Whilst you have fed upon my signories,
Disparked my parks and felled my forest woods,
From my own windows torn my household coat,
Rased out my imprese, leaving me no sign,
Save men's opinions and my living blood,
To show the world I am a gentleman. — William Shakespeare

When I go to the woods now, I always head out along the brook and go straight to the big maple. I run there, like Toby must have done on that stormy night, then I bend down and crawl on the earth. Because what if there's a clue? What if there's a piece of chunky strawberry bubble gum still bundled up in its waxy wrapper, or a weather-faded matchbook, or a fallen button from somebody's big gray coat? What if buried under all those leaves is me? Not this me, but the girl in a Gunne Sax dress with the back zipper open. The girl with the best boots in the world. What if she's under there? What if she's crying? Because she will be, if I find her. Her tears tell the story of what she knows. That the past, present, and future are just one thing. That there's nowhere to go from here. Home is home is home. — Carol Rifka Brunt

When you get a job on 'The Walking Dead' you imagine you're going to be running through the woods with a lot of weaponry shouting, 'Look out!' — Dallas Roberts

We parked under a strange sky with a faint image of a quarter-moon superimposed on it. There was a little woods beside us. This day had been dry out and hot, the buck pines and what-all simmering patientyl, but as we sat there smoking cigarettes it started to get very cold. "The summer's over," I said. — Denis Johnson

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' "

Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt.

"That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention. — Sanford Meisner

The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods. It took me four years, seven months, and three days to do it. I didn't know where I was going until I got there.
It was a place called the Bridge of the Gods. — Cheryl Strayed

Silena appeared out of the woods, her sword drawn. Her Aphrodite armour was pink and red, colour coordinated to match her clothes and makeup. She looked like Guerilla Warfare Barbie. — Rick Riordan

Timon will to the woods, where he shall find
Th' unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
The gods confound - hear me, you good gods all -
Th' Athenians both within and out that wall!
And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
To the whole race of mankind, high and low!
Amen. — William Shakespeare

When I consider that the nobler animal have been exterminated here - the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country ... Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all it's warriors ... I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth. — Henry David Thoreau

God has certainly not called us to throw our brains out the window as an appropriate response to His Grace.
R. Alan Woods [2012] — R. Alan Woods

I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid, avoiding grown-ups and my dysfunctional family, pretending I was half-wolf, a feral child who napped in nests made out of ferns, ate wild blueberries, and wove sticks and feathers into her hair. — Jennifer McMahon

He thought of the Riviera, as it was then before it had all been built up, with the lovely stretches of blue sea and the sand beaches and the stretches of pine woods and the mountains of the Esterel going out into the sea. He remembered it as it was when he and Zelda had first found it before people went there for the summer. — Ernest Hemingway,

A half-naked, betel-chewing pessimist stood upon the bank of the tropical river, on the edge of the still and immense forests; a man angry, powerless, empty-handed, with a cry of bitter discontent ready on his lips; a cry that, had it come out, would have rung through the virgin solitudes of the woods as true, as great, as profound, as any philosophical shriek that ever came from the depths of an easy chair to disturb the impure wilderness of chimneys and roofs. — Joseph Conrad

The more time you wait before telling somebody the truth about a secret you've been keeping, the longer your path out of the woods gets. — Andrew Smith

In nature, we find so may things. At the water's edge, atop a mountain, or in the middle of a park, I watch my children flourish in who they are. With all the distractions, toys, and walls out of the way, the essence of who they are just shines. When I remember to pay attention, I see it radiating so strongly that I can't help but be brought right into it myself. My children are experts on breathing, on living; they know how to do it. And the open air? Why, that's breath itself. When I find myself in the midst of unsettling chaos-full of more commitments and expectations that we can really handle-I need to look no further than my little ones for the answer to what I've forgotten: Stop. Breathe. Listen. Then we head straight to the beach, or right to the woods, and play until we find ourselves restored. — Amanda Blake Soule

What sets wilderness apart in the modern day is not that it's dangerous (it's almost certainly safer than any town or road) or that it's solitary (you can, so they say, be alone in a crowded room) or full of exotic animals (there are more at the zoo). it's that five miles out in the woods you can't buy anything. — Bill McKibben

It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting.
The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed. Everywhere skies extend, vistas deepen, walls become windows, doors open. — Annie Dillard

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. — Henry David Thoreau

Hello, there should be more advice about dealing with depression when you're stupid and worthless, so here is a self help exercise.
Today's assignment is simple. Just go out and get on the bus.
It doesn't matter which bus. Whichever bus comes next. Get on, and just go. You could ride that bus to the very end, thank the driver, and then walk into the woods and just die. Just lay down right there and wait and wait until you were dead. Who is going to miss you?
Really, think about it. If you went out to the middle of nowhere and just sat down in a ditch and cried by yourself until you were dead, who would be the first person to wonder where you'd gone?
Call them up! Maybe they want to get ice cream? — Joey Comeau

You have to have faith if you want to make it out of the woods. Faith is your only hope for deliverance. — Bryant McGill

On clear days we trudged through White Forest, a man-made woods of metal trees and plastic leaves constructed in the boon years of Brezhnev when the party boss's wife had grown nostalgic for the birches of her youth. By the time we trudged beneath them, however, the years had ravaged both the forest and the party boss's wife, and the plastic leaves above were as sagging and liver-spotted as her face. We went on. The mud was a mustard we plodded through. On the forest's far side we looked across the expanse of sulfurous waste stretching to the horizon. We shouted. We proclaimed. We didn't need to whisper out here. For a few short weeks in July, red wildflowers pushed through the oxidized waste and the whole earth simmered with apocalyptic beauty. — Anthony Marra

I must say this now about that first fire. It was magic. Out of dead tinder and grass and sticks came a live warm light. It cracked and snapped and smoked and filled the woods with brightness. It lighted the trees and made them warm and friendly. It stood tall and bright and held back the night. — Jean Craighead George

Brother woke just after midnight and he didn't make a sound, and as he climbed from out of bed with severed rings around his head, his feet didn't touch the ground. I could feel it then-a tiny miracle-so I followed him into the woods, crossed beneath the trees but only I left my prints in tow, he was afloat. He found a lonely tree and tied himself within its limbs, and he said to me these words: 'Don't you fear for me, I am where I'm supposed to be.' — Radical Face

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"
"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods, ...
She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

Blaire is mine. Don't touch her. I will kill you. Do you understand me?"
Woods let out a humourless laugh. "Yeah. Whatever, Finlay I'm not scared of your threats. The only reason I'm not touching Blaire is that she doesn't want me. It's fucking obvious who she wants. So calm the hell down. You've had her from the beginning. — Abbi Glines

I have decided that when I'm dead I'd like my body in the woods under a light coating of leaves. That being against the law, maybe I will go for cremation. I ask Chuck what he wants done with his remains. "Remains?" says Chuck. "Do there have to be remains? Can't I just vanish? Be no more?" I tell him I'm sorry but yes, he has to have remains. "Either I'm too young to be thinking about this," he says, "or I have to figure out a way of offing myself that will leave no remains. I could get in the shower with a chain saw, — Abigail Thomas

You ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty. They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly - I could seize them with my hands - out in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the nights, at dawn, excited by moods which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound and roar and storm about me till I have set them down in notes. — Ludwig Van Beethoven

From heart-experience, and in humblest sense
Of Modesty, that he, who in his youth
A daily wanderer among woods and fields
With living Nature hath been intimate,
Not only in that raw unpractised time
Is stirred to ecstasy, as others are,
By glittering verse but further, doth receive,
In measure only dealt out to himself,
Knowledge and increase of enduring joy
From the great Nature that exists in works
Of mighty Poets. — William Wordsworth

Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she stepped out onto it, away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could. — Peter S. Beagle

Whenever you leave cleared land, when you step from some place carved out, plowed, or traced by a human and pass into the woods, you must leave something of yourself behind. It is that sudden loss, I think, even more than the difficulty of walking through undergrowth, that keeps people firmly fixed to paths. In the woods, there is no right way to go, of course, no trail to follow but the law of growth. You must leave behind the notion that things are right. Just look around you. Here is the way things are. Twisted, fallen, split at the root. What grows best does so at the expense of what's beneath. A white birch feeds on the pulp of an old hemlock and supports the grapevine that will slowly throttle it. In the dead wood of another tree grow fungi black as devil's hooves. Overhead the canopy, tall pines that whistle and shudder and choke off light from their own lower branches. (from "Revival Road") — Louise Erdrich

We drive until the sun sets. There are more back roads into and out of these woods than anyone can count, than are probably on any map. You can drive and drive and drive and just see forest and fields, the occasional cow, the occasional elk, the even more occasional moose (the animal Patron Saint of Perpetual Embarrassment; I can relate, though not to being Catholic, which I've apparently decided mooses are). The Mountain glows in and out of view, turning pink, then blue, then shadow, as it watches us wander. — Patrick Ness

The caterpillars are coming. They're coming. As they passed a blunt rolled with marijuana shake around the bonfire, filled plastic cups with beer from a keg in the back of John Anderson's Bronco, snuck cigarettes at the red doors that led to the make-out woods behind school. As they waited on line at the cafeteria for pizza and Tater Tots, warmed up during choral practice, and changed for gym in the locker room. Until Maddie felt something titanic rushing toward the island, gathering steam like a nor'easter barreling toward shore, and the waiting filled with a tingling urgency she knew they all felt. She felt it. Car engines revved harder, highs soared higher, buzzes and crushes burned brighter. "Look." She lifted her palm as the insect inched across. The two lines of blue and red dots on its back glimmered like spots of blood rising after a pinprick. "They're here. — Julia Fierro

After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret, if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves round her like the fingers of a hand. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

It took ten years
In the woods to tell that a mushroom
Stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
Are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
Howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out
Season after season, same rhyme, same reason. — Carol Ann Duffy

I remember about the inside of the house," Joel went on, "was that the radio wasn't playing - it was buzzing, like it was picking up static. Anyway, we got out of the house and decided to run up to the university campus to call somebody. I'll never forget that. There were dogs outside, and when they saw us running, they started to run with us too. But when they got close, they ran backwards! And the birds - as we ran along, the whole woods were full of screeching birds! — Gerald Brittle

Each October I walk into the woods
looking for bones: rabbit skulls,
a grackle spine, the pelvis of a deer
with the blood bleached out. What died
in the lush of roses and mint
shines out from the tangle of twigs
that bind it to the place
of its last leaping. The living lack
that kind of clarity. In late April,
when the water spreads out and out
till everything is lilies and seepage,
there is only the mystery of tracks,
a rustle receding in the many reeds.
And so the bones accumulate
across my windowsill: the flightless
wings and exaggerated grins,
the silent unmoving reminders
of where the glories of April lead. — Charles Rafferty

On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In
the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer — Georgia O'Keeffe

See anything interesting out there in the woods of King Hall? — Scarlett Dawn

But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter nonsense of everything including all the solemn stuff given out by professional asses about the spiritual life; and simply to burst out laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements, and not in "contemplation" with a big "C," or in asceticism or in anything like that, not even in the apostolate. — Thomas Merton

Well, I've had more than one odd moment, I have, But I have never felt those impulses you have. Soon enough you get your fill of woods and things, I don't really envy birds their wings. How different are the pleasures of the intellect, 1130 Sustaining one from page to page, from book to book, And warming winter nights with dear employment And with the consciousness your life's so lucky. And goodness, when you spread out an old parchment, Heaven's fetched straight down into your study. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Mama and I walked back out of the woods just in time to hear Frannie squeal, "I want to stay here forever!" "Fine by me." Cleo smiled. She opened up her little red cooler and sloshed through the ice. She pulled out an orange soda bottle and passed it to my sister. "We can stay here all day, at least." "Cleo Harness?" yelled a familiar, husky voice from the edge of the woods. "Is that you?" "Pack up!" Cleo hollered. "We're leaving!" She kicked the cooler lid shut and stood up so fast that her camping chair stayed stuck to her behind. — Natalie Lloyd

It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever. — Alan Sillitoe

Lock yourself up in your room or go out in the woods where you an be alone. When you are alone the universe talks to you in flashes of inspiration. — Walter Russell

My friend Bo had just finished skinny-dipping when one of those bastards came trotting out of the woods and bit his dick clean off." "Just bit it off? Just like that?" "Yeah," I said. "Then that bastard pig put it on a stick and heated it over the campfire while Bo ran home and tried to explain it to his mama. — Nick Wilgus

I felt the bark of the trees on either side of me as I walked. It was very soothing. Here in the LBA Woods, the trees grew very close together and when I did not walk on the path, I would reach out with my fingertips and touch their bark as I passed. The skin of the trees was warm in the sunlight, and rough, and I imagined that each tree contained a soul. Like an Ent. I knew this idea was not a true thing, but still I felt good that the trees were here. — Ned Hayes

Most of the afternoons I would pass looking out at the pasture. I soon began seeing things. A figure emerging from the birch woods and running straight in my direction. Usually it was the Sheep Man, but sometimes it was the Rat, sometimes my girlfriend. Other times it was the sheep with the star on it's back. — Haruki Murakami

He pressed the herb to his nose. Thyme. He loved the name and he loved the smell. He looked out the window at the illusion of deep woods. His face too was out there, hung on a tree and returning his gaze. He drew close to the glass to lose the mirror effect. Outside, the forest panted its beefy halitus; the soil held the breaths of gloom in its dampness. Fifteen thousand years ago a glacier had sliced through this park he was living in, bringing with it the nutrients from all its travels. Fifteen thousand years ago human beings were the fable that frightened the dark woods. — Nancy Zafris

My beauty and independence were new for me. They brought me pride and satisfaction; they changed my sense of possibility. I felt awake in my body. Living in the woods, building my little shelter each night, a silent shadow, drifting in and out of mountain towns, a ghost, I was entirely self-reliant. On the trail I had persisted despite fear, and walking the Pacific Crest had led me deeply into happiness. I felt amazing now. In this body that brought me twelve hundred miles, I felt I could do anything. — Aspen Matis

She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time. When she'd been young, she'd had an insatiable hunger for more of it, though she hadn't understood why. Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out the world. The apple tree was still nice to lie near. They peony, for its scent, also fine. When she walked through the woods (infrequently now) she picked her way along the path, making way for the boy inside to run along before her. It could be hard to choose the time outside over the time within. — David Wroblewski

The sand swallows burst out of their scupper holes in the bluffs and out over the transparent drown of the water, back again to the white, to the brown, to the black, from moving to stock-still sand waves and water-worked woods and roots that hugged and twisted in the sun. — Saul Bellow

You can see the true heart of a man when you're out in the woods with a weapon — Jase Robertson

If the guy out in the woods with the Michigan Militia is a real estate negotiator, instead of some crackpot, and has a normal life, that's unnerving. You don't want to think it's as normal as the guy next door, hedging his lawn. It's easier to demonize or separate them off from 'us.' — Michael Moore

Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds andwars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, so hot? my little Sir. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm not a city kind of guy. I'm happiest when I'm tromping through the woods. That's why I don't live in Los Angeles. Being physically away from Hollywood probably loses me a few jobs, but the best ones seek me out. — Aidan Quinn

Time to switch to decaf, princess. If you're going to shriek at every bogey that jumps out and says 'boo', you'll be exhausted before we reach the edge of the woods. -Puck — Julie Kagawa

Can we go somewhere?" I ask. "Let's go somewhere off in the woods and I'll show you."
He hesitates, of course. What if I'm an alien invader trying to lure him to a secluded place so I can suck his brains out? Or a vampire, ravenous for his blood?
"I won't hurt you." Be not afraid.
His eyes flash with anger like I've come right out and called him a chicken.
"Okay." His jaw tightens. "But I drive."
"Of course. — Cynthia Hand

After a day of cloud and wind and rain Sometimes the setting sun breaks out again, And touching all the darksome woods with light, Smiles on the fields until they laugh and sing, Then like a ruby from the horizon's ring, Drops down into the night. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you go out in the country, spend a lot of time on decaying farms, and you see a lot of crumbling tobacco farms, and wandering the woods, there's something beneath the surface; there's something older ... more sinister. — Cullen Bunn

And i am a boy waiting-for the heat and fruitfulness of summer,waiting to see who will walk out of those woods for me. Waiting for my lovely summer girl — Maggie Stiefvater

Hey!" I bark, as loud as I can, and bring my arms above my head, trying to make myself look as large as possible. "Hey! Get out of here! Go on. Go." The bear withdraws another inch, confused, startled. "I said go." I reach out and strike against the nearest tree with my foot, sending a spray of bark in the bear's direction. As the bear still hesitates, uncertain - but not growling now, on the defensive, confused - I drop down into a crouch and scoop up the first rock I can get my fist around, and then I'm up and chucking it, hard. It connects just below the bear's left shoulder with a heavy thud. The bear shuffles backward, whimpering. Then it turns and bounds off into the woods, a fast black blur. — Lauren Oliver

Shut up!" Henry says, "You're going to wake up Jerry Rice."
"Jerry Rice?" Carter says, covering his mouth with a hand. I don't think I've ever seen Carter laugh so hard.
"Carter, would you like to be the godfather?" Henry asks. "You know, in case anything happens to me and Woods this week?"
"Charming," Carter says. "I'd be honored. Does JJ get to be godmother?"
"Obviously," I say.
"Can I hold Jerry Rice?" JJ asks. "He's so cute."
"No way, man," I reply. "I don't want to wake that thing up before practice. We'll be late if we have to feed it."
"What does it eat?" Carter asks.
"I have to breast-feed, cause I'm the mom," Henry says, continuing to push the stroller toward the locker room.
"Actually," I say, "It eats a metal rod, made out of, like, lead. So basically, we're learning how to poison babies."
"Radical," JJ says as we approach the gym, — Miranda Kenneally

O'er rivers, through woods,
With winding and weaves,
Their school bus sailed on
Through the new-fallen leaves.

When out on the road
There arose such a clatter,
They threw down their windows
To see what was the matter.

When what with their wondering eyes
Should they see,
But a miniature farm
And eight tiny turkey.

And a little old man
So lively and rugged,
They knew in a moment
It was Farmer Mack Nuggett.

He was dressed all in denim
From his head to his toe,
With a pinch of polyester
And a dash of Velcro.

And then in a twinkling
They heard in the straw
The prancing and pawing
Of each little claw.

More rapid than chickens
His cockerels they came.
He whistled and shouted
And called them by name:

"Now Ollie, now Stanley, now Larry and Moe,
On Wally, on Beaver, on Shemp and Groucho! — Dav Pilkey

She pushed the button and like a miracle her head filled with the sound of Jerry Trupiano's voice ... and more importantly, with the sounds of Fenway Park. She was sitting out here in the darkening, drippy woods, lost and alone, but she could hear thirty thousand people. It was a miracle. — Stephen King

At the heart of his paper was the notion that fairy tales relieved us of our need for order and allowed us impossible, irrational desires. Magic was real, that was his thesis. This thesis was at the very center of chaos theory - if the tiniest of actions reverberated throughout the universe in invisible and unexpected ways, changing the weather and the climate, then anything was possible. The girl who sleeps for a hundred years does so because of a single choice to thread a needle. The golden ball that falls down the well rattles the world, changing everything. The bird that drops a feather, the butterfly that moves its wings, all of it drifts across the universe, through the woods, to the other side of the mountain. The dust you breathe in was once breathed out. The person you are, the weather around you, all of it a spell you can't understand or explain. — Alice Hoffman

Instead of turning our heads from pain, we merge with it, neither holding on to it nor pushing it away, becoming instead an instrument of transformation. Recently, on my early morning drive to a health club, I saw a deer in the middle lane, trying to get up, but obviously crippled. Her eyes looked confused and frightened. As I drove by, I breathed in her pain and breathed out a blessing. I could feel a dark cloud swirling inside of me, but I also had an image of a deer running freely in the woods. I can never know if it helped her, but something loosened inside of me. Instead of turning away from her pain, I joined her. It was then I realized more deeply the power of Tonglin...

When you feel hurt, confused, lonely, or sad, breathe into your pain, feel it, be with it, then breathe out an image of clarity, light, and a blessing. This alone will start to change your life. — Charlotte Kasl