Genius Loci Quotes

“It is good people who make good places.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

“The place was silent and - aware.”
― P.C. Wren

“It was Stevenson, I think, who most notably that there are some places that simply demand a story should be told of them. ...

After all, perhaps Stevenson had only half of the matter. It is true there are places which stir the mind to think that a story must be told about them. But there are also, I believe, places which have their story stored already, and want to tell this to us, through whatever powers they can; through our legends and lore, through our rumors, and our rites. By its whispering fields and its murmuring waters, by the wailing of its winds and the groaning of its stones, by what it chants in darkness and the songs it sings in light, each place must reach out to us, to tell us, tell us what it holds. ("The Axholme Toll")”
― Mark Valentine, Best New Horror 21

“You should open these doors with care and caution-but, first, you must know how to close them. And above all, you must know which doors should be left unopened...”
― Michael Bentine, Doors of the mind

“What better way to read the landscape than by walking through it?”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“The soul of place is like an invisible net --or a force field -- cast up at times from within a house, neighborhood, or landscape to draw us into its labyrinthine folds.”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“To avoid the Scylla of paleotechnic peace and the Charybdis of War, the leaders of the coming polity will steer a bold course for Eutopia [sic]. They will aim at the development of every region, its folk, work and place, in terms of the genius loci, of every nation, according to the best of its tradition and spirit; but in such wise that each region, each nation, makes its unique contribution to the rich pattern of our ever-evolving Western civilisation.”
― Patrick Geddes, The Coming Polity: A Study in Reconstruction

“A deep map is a sample swatch of the multiple manifestations of the genius loci.”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“The deep map configures narratives. It is a matrix of intertexual storytelling, charting our movements through the landscape.”
― Linda Lappin, The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

“The monks didn't like to go up on to the moors. There was something unwholesome about the place, they said. There were strange shapes far off on the ridges and sometimes noises under the peat. When they came to collect kindling and fuel for the abbey's fireplaces, they wouldn't go too deep into the Wood either. There was something worse than the wolves in there, something that always seemed determined to follow them out into the open.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, Devil's Day