Reeve Lindbergh > Quotes

“Time flies, but if I am willing to fly with it, then I can be airborne, too.”
― Reeve Lindbergh

“To lose such an important listener in life is like losing my shadow. With no shadow, does a person truly exist under the sun? With no listener, does a person really have a voice? Silence means so many things to human beings. Some of them are unbearable.”
― Reeve Lindbergh

“In one of the chapters of her book my mother characterizes the relationship of sisters as one that "can illustrate the essence of relationships," an understanding companionship of two complete and independent individuals who choose to be together.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, Under a Wing: A Memoir

“As I sat for longer periods, and looked not at the forest trees but into them, the view began to change and deepen. I began to see the lift of upward curving branches, lighter on the top and rich with rounded darkness underneath. I saw the way these trees fit beside, in front of, and behind one another, sharing soil and sunlight. Where I once saw a wall of trees and called it “woods,” now I see shape and movement and the slow dance of living and growing that I mistook for stillness. I learned that when I was impatient or distracted in my watching, I couldn’t see.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, Two Lives

“But today, again, I want to learn the character of the trees, even though I know that the names- at least, the names given to them by humans- are not names the trees themselves use. They speak with bark and branch and leaf, with alterations in shade and sunlight, with the patterns of growth rings and with the activity of birds and animals, with movement inside stillness. Even if these aren’t their true names, it is good to speak the designations, even just in my mind, as I watch them and honor them: these apple and cherry orchards of farm and pasture, these maples at the edge of the road and in the woods, the white pines and fir and spruce in the forest, willows by the pond, these birches and beeches, these oaks.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, Two Lives

“It has taken me most of my writing life to understand that my “writing place” is here where I live, and that my “writing voice” is just my regular old voice, the one I use all the time. I am aware that the most important things in my life and my work are so close to me that I didn’t even fully recognize them for a long time.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, Two Lives

“Here in the northeastern corner of Vermont, there are probably invisible signs posted all around his farm, like the code left by hoboes traveling through the country in the 1930s. “Trust this man,” they say. “Good for a night’s lodging, for first aid, for food, and for sanctuary.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, No More Words: A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Of course, though, there can be treasures revealed in a conversation, whether we realize it or not at the time.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, Two Lives

“Even when I write fiction, which I don’t do too often, the fictional characters are familiar to me, like relatives I might have had in another life, and the setting is a place I know or have known. If I feel acquainted with the people and the landscape, I can enter this world and imagine what happens there and write it down. For me that world will always be some form of home.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, Two Lives

“Another reason the “Are you still writing?” question is so hard to answer is that to ask me “Are you still writing?” is like asking “Are you still breathing?” Writing is the way I stay aware of being alive, the way I find out what I’m thinking, the way I understand the world.”
― Reeve Lindbergh, Two Lives