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Quote by Wendell Berry

“Increasingly over the last maybe forty years, the thought has come to me that the old world in which our people lived by the work of their hands, close to weather and earth, plants and animals, was the true world; and that the new world of cheap energy and ever cheaper money, honored greed, and dreams of liberation from every restraint, is mostly theater. This new world seems a jumble of scenery and props never quite believable, an economy of fantasies and moods, in which it is hard to remember either the timely world of nature or the eternal world of the prophets and poets." -Wendell Berry, Andy Catlett Early Travels, p. 93”

Book:Andy Catlett: Early Travels

Work

Andy Catlett: Early Travels

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Author

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry, an American novelist born on August 5, 1934, is renowned for his profound descriptions of rural life and his critical views on modern industrial civilization. more

“As children we got so we could tell time by the sun pretty well, and would know by the light in the room when we opened our eyes that it was seven o'clock and time to get up for school, and later that it was almost ten and then almost noon and almost three o'clock and time to be dismissed. School ran strictly by clocks, the old Regulators that Mr. Hamburger was always fiddling with, adding and subtracting paper clips on the pendulum to achieve perfect time, but we were sensitive to light, knowing how little was available to us as winter came on, and always knew what time it was - as anyone will who leads a regular life in a familiar place. My poor great-grandpa,when his house burned down when Grandma left the bread baking in the summer kitchen oven to go visit the Berges and they built the new one facing west instead of south: they say he was confused the rest of his life and never got straightened out even when he set up his bed in the parlor ( which faced north as his former bedroom had): he lived in a twilight world for some time and then moved in his mind to the house he'd grown up in, and in the end didn't know one day from another until he died." Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil," but there's more than one kind of of shadow, and when a man loses track, it can kill him. Not even the siren could have saved my great-grandpa. He died of misdirection.”

Humor Satire Parody American Life Sentiment Virtuoso Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegon Days National Bestseller

Book:Lake Wobegon Days

Source: Lake Wobegon Days

“Instead, they face a bizarre new world of frustrating duties and counterintuitive ideas: sit still, learn math, find a job, move away from friends, ignore kin, drive cars, leave kids in day care, and grow burdensome in old age.”

American Life

Book:Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior

Source: Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior

“Though we could always explain that our life was not as glamorous as it might seem in the telling, we did come to realize that we'd made some radical decisions. We also came to realize, however, that the life that was laid before us in that not-so-distant past – becoming an industrial engineer, for example, working fifty hours a week for a car company's profit, getting an abysmal two weeks of vacation a year, never really feeling like your work had any meaning – was its own radical path. In Europe, life was different. Ambition was secondary to leisure; long, conversation-filled meals, the norm. The parks were full of people strolling, not running; cafes with people talking, not doing work on their own solitary computers.”

American Life

Book:Six Years of A Floating Life

Source: Six Years of A Floating Life