Laurie Lee Quotes

I'll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound.

Bless... the two painting masters who first pointed out to me that there was coming and going among trees, that there was sunlight in shadows.

The shadows in the early morning don't tell much. The shadows rest at that time. So it's useless to gaze very early in the day. Around six in the morning the shadows wake up, and they are best around five in the afternoon. Then they are fully awake.

I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds - a split second's enough for them to start being something else.

Anything, everything, can be learned if you can just get yourself in a little patch of real ground, real nature, real wood, real anything ? and just sit still and watch.

It is, of course, a trite observation to say that we live "in a period of transition." Many people have said this at many times. Adam may well have made the remark to Eve on leaving the Garden of Eden.

"It is light that reveals, light that obscures, light that communicates. It is light I "listen" to. The light late in the day has a distinct quality, as it fades toward the darkness of evening. After sunset there is a gentle leaving of the light, the air begins to still, and a quiet descends. I see magic in the quiet light of dusk. I feel quiet, yet intense energy in the natural elements of our habitat. A sense of magic prevails. A sense of mystery. It is a time for contemplation, for listening - a time for making photographs. "

Gray day. Everything is gray. I watch. But nothing moves today.

Flowers and plants are silent presences. They nourish every sense except the ear.

No theory changes what it is a theory about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. ... What does change is our chance of doing something about the subject of a theory. Newton's analysis of the light in a rainbow was a step in the direction of the laser.

... there are shadows because there are hills.

Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

The other day when I was walking through the woods, I saw a rabbit standing in front of a candle making shadows of people on a tree.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cates, dogs, butterflies and people.

I always look outside.

I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvellous ideas.

Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the life-blood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work.

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute.

The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.

See the gold sunshine patching, And streaming and streaking across The gray-green oaks; and catching, By its soft brown beard, the moss.

I'm interested in the landscape of the face, the way in which light and shadow fall across the forms. That's really my subject matter.