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Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit Quotes

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Famous Rebecca Solnit Quotes

“I grew up with landscape as a recourse, with the possibility of exiting the horizontal realm of social relations for a vertical alignment with earth and sky, matter and spirit. Vast open spaces speak best to this craving, the spaces I myself first found in the desert and then in the western grasslands.”

FirstsMatterEarthSpiritFoundSpeakSocialSpaceSkyPossibilityGrewGrew UpRelationWesternDesertLandscapeRealmsCravingAlignmentRecourseVerticalHorizontalOpen SpacesEarth And SkySocial RelationsGrasslands
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who 'knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.”

WritingMindHumansWellsMaySoulProcessNatureHalfNovelCuttingStageFitCreaturesDoctorsTransformationCastsCuresButterflyDecayHuman SoulDoctor WhoRegenerationCaterpillarsRottingEmblemsDeteriorationMythical CreaturesChrysalis
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown.”

PeopleWayBelieveSometimesStoriesShowsMightWaitingHalfWorryFantasyHappenedPureSurpriseUglyAccidentsMapsScenariosSurprise MeAbductionDesertion
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“They are all beasts of burden in a sense, ' Thoreau once remarked of animals, 'made to carry some portion of our thoughts.' Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.”

MadeWould BeLanguageNatureImaginationAnimalThousandTenSpeechTragedyBurdenBeastPortionsOur ThoughtsDisappearanceSilencingBeast Of Burden
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.”

ThinkingWorldHouseSocialWalksJourneyPrideReaderWalkingPrejudiceIndependenceWanderSpheresHikingSolitaryJaneTrekkingStrollingHeroinesSaunteringAustenDarcy
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).”

WalksStudyJourneyMastersWalkingMountainWanderParadoxDestinationPerpetualHikingClosestTrekkingStrollingSaunteringParables
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“Cities have always offered anonymity, variety, and conjunction, qualities best basked in by walking: one does not have to go into the bakery or the fortune-teller's, only to know that one might. A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.”

KnowsDoeMightImaginationCitiesQualityWalkingFortuneVarietySpursAnonymityGreat CitiesConjunctionsUrban PlanningBakeriesFortune Teller
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.”

KindUseBodyTermNatureSpaceWalksPleasureTroubleJourneyWalkingSpeciesVariousWanderWarningHikingTrekkingStrollingEcosystemsSaunteringFree TimeIndicatorsAlluringWarning SignsEndangerment
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“The new architecture and urban design of segregation could be called Calvinist: they reflect a desire to live in a world of predestination rather than chance, to strip the world of its wide-open possibilities and replace them with freedom of choice in the marketplace.”

WorldDesireChoicesChanceDesignPossibilityWideArchitectureUrbanSegregationMarketplaceFreedom Of ChoicePredestinationDesire To LiveUrban Design
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.”

ProblemDesireSpaceFocusObjectsTreatsBlueLongingAcquireAddressesSensationsObjects Of Desire
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity (economic and otherwise), understanding of where water comes from and garbage goes, consumption or conservation. They map our lives.”

MatterUnderstandingWaterOur LivesEconomicDesignDiversityScalesMapsConsumptionConservationGarbageCivil Society
Book:Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
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“An aptitude test established architecture as an alternative [career]. But what decided the matter for [Teddy Cruz] was the sight of a fourth-year architecture student sitting at his desk at a window, drawing and nursing a cup of coffee as rain fell outside. 'I don't know, I just liked the idea of having this relationship to the paper and the adventure of imagining the spaces. That was the first image that captured me.”

KnowsYearsFirstsIdeasMatterSpaceCareersStudentsAdventurePaperSittingRainWindowDecidedTestsSightArchitectureDrawingCoffeeCupsAlternativesFourthDesksCapturedNursingCoffee CupTeddyCruzAptitudeAptitude TestFourth Year
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason -- its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over water is to value economy over ecology, that which can be locked up over that which connects all things.”

IfsHas BeensReasonValuesWaterEconomyElementsAll ThingsGoldOppositesMetaphorLockedEcologyLocked UpMobilityFluidity
Book:Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
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“I think one of the primary goals of a feminist landscape architecture would be to work toward a public landscape in which we can roam the streets at midnight, in which every square is available for Virginia Woolf to make up her novels”

ThinkingWould BeGoalNovelStreetsFeministAvailableArchitecturePrimariesLandscapeSquaresMidnightVirginiaWoolfLandscape Architecture
Book:Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
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“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

GivingShouldWarFeelingsEarthPoorBreakDoorsLuckyCommitmentTreasureEndlessTicketsBreaking DownEmergenciesSteersLotteryAnnihilationClutchSofasLottery TicketEndless War
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“Musing takes place in a kind of meadowlands of the imagination, a part of the imagination that has not yet been plowed, developed, or put to any immediately practical use…time spent there is not work time, yet without that time the mind becomes sterile, dull, domesticated. The fight for free space — for wilderness and public space — must be accompanied by a fight for free time to spend wandering in that space.”

MindKindUseFightingImaginationSpacePracticalsWanderDullWildernessFree TimeTime SpentMusings
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" (Plato) The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration- how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”

ThinkingKnowsWayWantSelfInspirationSidesGraceBecomingFindingsTransformationBoundariesTerritoryPlatoExtendingLove WisdomBecoming SomeoneBecoming Someone Else
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.”

WorldLostTermLosesMysteryArmsCapableSurrenderUncertaintyFadesSurroundingsLosing YourselfFade AwayVoluptuous
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.”

KnowsWorldSoulWholeHomeLightDesireSpeakStarsLinesSleepAnimalDarknessUnderstoodAwakeningCeaseWhere You AreMakersShelterConstellationsIntersectionsCenter Of The World
Book:Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
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