Home > Author > John Lewis-Stempel
1 " Such are the inconsistences of humans in uniform, that the same endothermic vertebrates, which were believed a blessing, an aid to nostalgia, a sign from God, could also be shot for food (see p281-88) and employed as tools. "
― John Lewis-Stempel
2 " Hares have the chiselled head of horses, the legs of lurchers – and the eyes of lions; the ancient Chinese considered the animal so other-worldly they decided its ancestor lived in the moon. "
― John Lewis-Stempel , The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland
3 " To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious. "
― John Lewis-Stempel , Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field
4 " you rise at dawn in May you can savour the world before the pandemonium din of the Industrial Revolution and 24/7 shopping. "
5 " I have decided to sleep under the stars... Tonight heaven is my roof, and the hedges my walls... The field folds me in soft wings. "
6 " Wordsworth once wrote of ‘spots of time’, experiences so intense they expand and inform existence ever after. They have a ‘renovating virtue’. "
7 " And nothing in nature is wasted. The bodies of the dead meadow ants will go to nourish the soil of the meadow. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Flesh to flesh. "
8 " And I wonder, is it really so difficult to enter, in some slight degree, into the mind-frame of an animal? Are we not all beasts? "
9 " One day he disappears. I hope he has joined a murder – the collective noun for crows – and not become a meal for a predator. I never really find out, but either way it’s a murder. One thing I do know: one of the greatest privileges in my life has been my bond with Crow Crow. I would so like Crow Crow to come back to bite the hand that fed it, and eat the grain in the wheatfield. I think every crow I see is Crow Crow. Of course, in a sense every crow is. "
10 " Nothing conserves like poverty. "
11 " Almost all the things I love are to do with grass. Geese, sheep, cows, horses. Even dogs eat grass. "
12 " They killed farming a year or so later. And they killed it by putting cabs on tractors. No longer was the farmer alive to the elements, or even close to the earth. "
13 " Despite all the seen and unseen motion of summer, there is a stillness in the landscape, as though it was trapped in a glass jar. "
14 " Eternity would not be long enough to contain all the summer eves one could enjoy if they were like this "
15 " High summer and one can hear the universe; so overwhelming is e accumulated sound of growing in the meadow and in hedges, of pollen being released, of particles moving in the heat, that all the minute motions together create a continuous him: the sound of summer. "
16 " He may well build other nests, which he will display to any female who enters his territory. If she likes any of his pads she will move in, decorate, and bear his children. A slapper seeking a Premier League husband could not be more shallow. "
17 " He may well build other nests, which he will display to any female who enters his territory. If she likes any of his pads she will move in, decorate, and bear his children. A slapper seeking a Premier League husband could not be more shallow. Mind you, he is no moral giant. As soon as he has ensconced one female, he will try to tempt another Jenny Wren into one of his spare nests, where she too will give birth to his progeny. The little cock then travels between his families, a bigamous commercial traveller in a 1930s thriller. "
18 " Magpies are singular, excitable birds. Watch them in the examining sunlight: they split three ways. One stays in the field; he walks left, runs right, zig-zags, tires of his erratic pedestrianism, then flies for thirty yards, lands, starts over. He "
19 " November is one of my favourite months, with its faded afternoons of cemetery eeriness, and its churchy smell of damp musting leaves. "
20 " I suddenly realize that the swifts have gone. No fanfare. Just a prestidigitator's trick, a disappearance into the morning's mist. Inside I sigh a little. One of life's allotment of summers is over. "
