Gary Snyder QUOTES

1 " Will be but corpses dressed in frocks,
who cannot speak to birds or rocks. "

2 " The Government finally decided
To wage the war all-out. Defeat
is Un-American.
And they took to the air,
Their women beside them
in bouffant hairdos
putting nail-polish on the
gunship cannon-buttons.
And they never came down
for they found,
the ground
is Pro-Communist. And dirty.
And the insects side with the Viet Cong. "

― Gary Snyder , Turtle Island

3 " Goal: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers, the presence of Pelican and Osprey and Gray Whale in our lives; salmon and trout in our streams; unmuddied language and good dreams. "

― Gary Snyder , Turtle Island

4 " In the 40,000 year time scale we're all the same people. We're all equally primitive, give or take two or three thousand years here or a hundred years there. "

― Gary Snyder , The Old Ways

5 " Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. "

― Gary Snyder

6 " But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in. "

― Gary Snyder , The Gary Snyder Reader, Volume 1: Prose, Poetry and Translations 1952-1998

7 " If we are here for any good purpose at all (other than collating texts, running rivers, and learning the stars), I suppose it is to entertain the rest of nature. A gang of sexy primate clowns. All the little critters creep in close to listen when the human beings are in a good mood and willing to play some tunes. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

8 " Here is perhaps the most delicious turn that comes out of thinking about politics from the standpoint of place: anyone of any race, language, religion, or origin is welcome, as long as they live well on the land. The great Central Valley region does not prefer English over Spanish or Japanese or Hmong. If it had any preferences at all, it might best like the languages it has heard for thousands of years, such as Maidu or Miwok, simply because it is used to them. Mythically speaking, it will welcome whomever chooses to observe the etiquette, express the gratitude, grasp the tools, and learn the songs that it takes to live there. "

― Gary Snyder , A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds

9 " When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own. "

― Gary Snyder , Earth House Hold

10 " I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures. "

― Gary Snyder

11 " Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there. "

― Gary Snyder

12 " As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the Neolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. "

― Gary Snyder

13 " True affluence is not needing anything. "

― Gary Snyder

14 " There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea. "

― Gary Snyder

15 " Having a place means that you know what a place means...what it means in a storied sense of myth, character and presence but also in an ecological sense...Integrating native consciousness with mythic consciousness "

― Gary Snyder

16 " In this huge old occidental culture our teaching elders are books. Books are our grandparents! "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

17 " Get drunk all the time. Go someplace and score.
Walk in and walk out of the Asp
Hike up Tam
Keep quitting and starting at Berkeley
Watch the pike in the Steinhart Aquarium: he doesn't move.
Sleeping with stangers
Keeping up on the news
Chanting sutras after sitting
Practicing yr frailing on guitar
Get dropped off in the fog in the night
Fall in love twenty times
Get divorced
Keep moving — move out to the Sunset
Get lost — or
Get found "

― Gary Snyder , Mountains and Rivers Without End

18 " Le porte d'entrata sono tutte orientate verso est. Al centro di ogni casa c'è il focolare, ogni mattina la luce
del sole entra attraverso la porta che guarda a oriente e illumina il focolare, allora dicono che la dea del
sole visita sua sorella, la dea del fuoco del focolare. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

19 " C'è un punto oltre il quale l'addestramento e la pratica non possono portare. Zeami, lo straordinario
drammaturgo e regista di teatro Noh del quattordicesimo secolo, che era anche sacerdote zen, ha parlato
di questo momento come di una “sorpresa”. È la sorpresa di scoprire di non aver più bisogno di un sé, la
sorpresa di ritrovarsi una cosa sola col proprio lavoro in un movimento pieno di fluida disciplina e grazia.
Allora si capisce che cosa vuol dire essere una palla d'argilla che gira sul tornio, un trucciolo bianco
sollevato dalla punta dello scalpello o una delle molte mani di Kannon, Bodhisattva della Compassione. A
questo punto è possibile essere liberi, nel lavoro e dal lavoro. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

20 " Switchback"

turn, turn,
and again,
hard scrabble
steep travel
ahead. "

― Gary Snyder , The Back Country

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