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The Overstory


"Monumental… A gigantic fable of genuine truths."—Barbara Kingsolver, The New ...
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Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

Created: 07/26/19

Replies: 8

Posted Jul. 26, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
davinamw

Join Date: 10/15/10

Posts: 3444

Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?


Posted Aug. 05, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
paulak

Join Date: 04/21/11

Posts: 264

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

Oh my. I have so many highlights throughout the book, you can barely read some pages. Here are a few of my favorites:

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. But people -- oh my word -- people! People could be the heaven that the Earth is trying to speak to." (page 454)

"The psyche's job is to keep us blissfully ignorant of who we are, what we think, and how we'll behave in any situation. We're all operating in a dense fog of mutual reinforcement." (page 231)

"She takes his shaking hand in the dark. It feels good, like a root must feel, when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground. There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things." (page 144)


Posted Aug. 05, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
KelHydra

Join Date: 08/05/19

Posts: 17

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

I'm glad I'm not the only one to pick out quotes throughout a book. :)

As a historian and an artist, this quote really did it for me because I think it's pretty much true:

"At school in Chicago, he learned many things:
1. Human history was the story of increasingly disoriented hunger.
2. Art was nothing he thought it was.
3. People would make just about anything you can think to make. Intricate scrimshawed portraits on the tips of pencil leads. Polyurethane-coated dog shit. Earthworks that could pass for small nations.
4. Makes you think different about things, don't it?" (pg. 20)


Posted Aug. 05, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
Andrea

Join Date: 08/31/18

Posts: 32

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

I added forty quotes to my Goodreads' page, so choosing one is extremely difficult! I suppose that Ma Shouying's words to his son were particularly sobering. "You can't come back to something that is gone." (pg. 28)

As a parent of and friend to artists with degrees, however, Nick's defense preparation, "Dad, I would very much like to plunge off the edge of commonsense existence, at your expense, and become certifiably unemployable," (pg. 20) made me smile!


Posted Aug. 06, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
paulak

Join Date: 04/21/11

Posts: 264

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

Ha - love the Nick quote, too, Andrea!


Posted Aug. 08, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
nancyl

Join Date: 04/21/14

Posts: 39

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

I found the old palindrome interesting: La ruta nos aporto otro paso natural. Had to Google it.


Posted Aug. 08, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
davinamw

Join Date: 10/15/10

Posts: 3444

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

And for me, and anyone else who is language-challenged, here is the translation I found :)
The path gives the natural next step


Posted Aug. 10, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
renem

Join Date: 12/01/16

Posts: 292

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

(Page 293)
One quote that stuck with me was the part when after reading all the books that the previous sitters left in the hammock lending library, Maidenhair asked Watchman if he loved the people in the books. He responded by saying maybe, but they were all imprisoned. He said he just wanted to shake them and yell, "Get out of yourselves, damn it! Look around!"
Haven't we all felt that way one time or another?


Posted Aug. 21, 2019 Go to Top | Go to bottom | link | alert
MarieA

Join Date: 10/12/11

Posts: 256

RE: Are there any quotes in the book that resonated with you?

Over the years, I have kept a small three ring binder filled with quotes from the various books I have read. I have the following from THE OVERSTORY:
Dennis tells Patricia that the loggers say"Lets go let a little light in that swamp." Forests panic people. Too much going on there. Humans need sky.

Ray says to Dorothy:"I do not think it too remote that we may come to regard the Earth, as some have suggested, as one organism, of which mankind is a functional part--the mind, perhaps."

The guiding principle of Neelay's young life:"Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe in the future he shall be."


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