“There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.”

“The old
Old winds that blew
When chaos was, what do
They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?”

“You said that the mind is like the wind, but perhaps it is we who are like the wind. Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying”

“… I feel as though I made a face and the wind changed, and now I have to go through life grimacing in this horrible way.”

“Grieving, yet somehow unbending, steadfast, unafraid, the voice rose through the evening like memory, and a gust of wind blew up from the river, dimming the song, rustling the trees, then died and became still. I’ll lay in de grave and stretch out my arms … Suddenly the voice ceased, and all was quiet.
Then what I done was wrong, Lord? I said. And if what I done was wrong, is there no redemption?
I raised my eyes upward but there was no answer, only the gray impermeable sky and night falling fast over Jerusalem.”

“I hope when he dies, he does become a tree. I hope he's in the middle of the wilderness and he's doing his tree thing. Whatever it is trees do. I know they do a lot of work with breezes. And wouldn't it be fantastic if while he was out there just enjoying his treeness, through the woods, a huge sweaty guy with an ax comes long? Sees him… [tree-chopping motions]. Chops him down, smash! Put a chain around him, drag him through the mud and the muck, throw him into a sawmill and grind him up. [Nuzzsaw noise] Then you pound him down into paper, and once he's paper, you print the Bible on him.”

“Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew. While these fleas flew, freezy breeze blew. Freezy breeze made these three trees freeze. Freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze. That's what made these three free fleas sneeze.”

“The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never interfere in his private life or his citizenship. He is tied to the company through a voluntary and cancellable employment contract, not through some mystical or indissoluble bond.”

“In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.”

“Once man was tossed about helplessly and incessantly by the wind that blew through him—now the toughest of all plants is more sensitive, more easily moved than he. In other words, death is better than life, nothing is better than anything. Nor is this a silly adolescent pessimism peculiar to Housman, as so many critics assure you. It is better to be dead than alive, best of all never to have been born—said a poet approvingly advertised as seeing life steadily and seeing it whole; and if I began an anthology of such quotations there it would take me a long time to finish. The attitude is obviously inadequate and just as obviously important.”