History is not truth versus falsehoods, but a mixture of both, a mรฉlange of tendencies, reactions, dreams, errors, and power plays. What's important is what we make of it; its moral use. By writing history, we can widen readers' thinking and deepen their sympathies in every direction. Perhaps history should show us not how to control the world, but how to enlarge, deepen, and discipline ourselves.
Gretel EhrlichBetween highway sounds I heard waves and thought how the curve of the coastline here had sheltered and nurtured live-born sharks, humans, and migrating whales. Here, at the edge of the continent, time and distance stopped; in the lull between sets of waves I could get a fresh start.
Gretel EhrlichThe truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.
Gretel EhrlichAnimals give us their constant, unjaded faces, and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals.
Gretel EhrlichWhat Flaubert refers to as the โmรฉlancholies du voyageโ is like the sadness I feel as one season departs and another arrives.
Gretel EhrlichLove life first, then march through the gates of each season; go inside nature and develop the discipline to stop destructive behavior; learn tenderness toward experience, then make decisions based on creating biological wealth that includes all people, animals, cultures, currencies, languages, and the living things as yet undiscovered; listen to the truth the land will tell you; act accordingly.
Gretel Ehrlich