On opening sentences: "If in the first chapter a hurricane is going to blow down an oak tree which falls through the kitchen roof, there's no need to first describe the kitchen. "
If you know the differences between an oak and a poplar, a spruce and a pine, down to the needles. . . you are able to paint that tree with more conviction, even if done with a few broad strokes.
What will the solemn Hemlock- What will the Oak tree say?
In 1846 the prairie town of Oak River existed only in a settler's dream.
The boughs of the oak are roaring inside the acorn.
The acorn of ambition often grows into an oak from which men hang.
George Foreman can knock down an oak tree. . . but oak trees don't move.
You cannot plant an acorn in the morning, and expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of an oak.
Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.
The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.
The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak which resists it.
You cannot spend your life wanting to be someone else, snipping off pieces of yourself you don't like, and suddenly expect, upon reaching a goal, to be confident, self-accepting, rooted like an oak tree in your being.
Man is the circled oak; woman the ivy.
Some men are like oak leaves -- they don't know when they're dead, but still hang right on; and there are others who let go before anything has really touched them.
Storms make the oak grow deeper roots.
This oak tree and me, we're made of the same stuff.
As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.
Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.
Outward attacks and troubles rather fix than unsettle the Christian, as tempests from without only serve to root the oak faster; while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it.
Last century, when the beams needed replacing, carpenters used oak trees that had been planted in 1386 when the dining hall was first built. The 14th-century builder had planted the trees in anticipation of the time, hundreds of years in the future, when the beams would need replacing. Did the carpenters plant new trees to replace the beams again a few hundred years from now?
