“To really touch something, she is learning—the bark of a sycamore tree in the gardens; a pinned stag beetle in the Department of Etymology; the exquisitely polished interior of a scallop shell in Dr. Geffard’s workshop—is to love it.”

— Anthony Doerr , book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To really touch something, she is learning—the bark of a sycamore tree in the gardens; a pinned stag beetle in the Depa…" by Anthony Doerr?

Anthony Doerr 55

American writer 1973

Related quotes

“She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

“I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day…And Nanny let my beetle out
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out
She went and let my beetle out-
And beetle ran away.She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid-
And we'd get another matchbox, and write BEETLE on the lid.We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME,
And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very, very sorry that I tried to run away."And Nanny's very sorry too, for you know what she did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.”

A.A. Milne book Now We Are Six

Forgiven (affectionately also known as Alexander Beetle).
Now We Are Six (1927)

“To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.”

Elizabeth David (1913–1992) British cookery writer

Source: An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

“This is not seeing the trees instead of the forest, this is seeing the bark on the trees, this very concreteness.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: Schizophrenics have a whole lot of trouble telling the level of abstraction of a story. They're always biased in the direction of interpreting things more concretely than is actually the case. You would take a schizopohrenic and say, "Okay, what do apples, bananas and oranges have in common?" and they would say, "They all are multi-syllabic words."
You say "Well, that's true. Do they have anything else in common?" and they say, "Yes, they actually all contain letters that form closed loops."
This is not seeing the trees instead of the forest, this is seeing the bark on the trees, this very concreteness.