The Island Of Missing Trees Quotes
"Without understanding our past, how can we hope to shape our future?"
"I can detect other people’s sadnesses the way one animal could smell another of its kind a mile away."
"Every visitor to Cyprus wanted to dine here – and taste its famous stuffed courgette flowers followed by chicken souvlaki, cooked over open-air charcoal."
"A tree’s rings do not only reveal its age, but also the traumas it has endured."
"We all come from the same island. She was born in Cyprus, from the foam of Paphos."
"People from troubled islands can never be normal. We can pretend, we can even make amazing progress – but we can never really learn to feel safe."
"Aphrodite was pretty, yeah, but was she nice, that’s another question."
"You mustn’t worry about such things. Trees may be remarkable creatures, but I wouldn’t take it that far."
"It is a curse, an enduring memory. When elderly Cypriot women wish ill upon someone, they don’t ask for anything blatantly bad to befall them."
"The greater your powers of retention, the slimmer your chances at optimism."
"One must have breakfast like a sultan, lunch like a vizier, dinner like a mendicant. Otherwise the whole order is broken."
"I always wanted to come and visit you. How could I not want to meet my sister’s child? But I had made a promise."
"The dilemma between optimism and pessimism is more than a theoretical debate for us. It is integral to our evolution."
"Healthy, loamy dirt is more precious than diamonds and rubies."
"We are scared of happiness, you see. From a tender age we have been taught that in the air, in the Etesian wind, an uncanny exchange is at work."
"The women of Cyprus, whether of the north or the south, are beautiful. How can we not be? We are related to Aphrodite – and while she was a bitch, there’s no denying she was a stunner."
"For kindness always is – direct, naive, effortless."
"Under stress we make new combinations of DNA, new genetic variations."
"If you find a happy village, look for the cook."
"If you rush him, you’re going to make him stutter."
"It helped to burn olive leaves and Panagiota did this regularly, the odour sharp and faintly suffocating and so pervasive that, after a while, it singed itself into your skin."
"I brought you something important. Come with me. It’s in my room – somewhere!"
"I swear to God! The number of times I have caught him …"
"I didn’t make falafel. It’s not even our cuisine."
"It was a very unwise move sending these British regiments here during the hot weather."
"Our eyes only notice what’s in front of us, but it’s different with holy men. They see everything."
"If you think a healer might help, he will. We just need to take action. A cheese vessel will not sail merely by words."
"You know what I’ve been thinking since? I’ve been thinking that you are my country."
"Truth is a rhizome – an underground plant stem with lateral shoots."
"When the islanders realized where the rancid smell was coming from, they set about getting rid of the carcasses."
"I listened to them with curiosity, but I have formed my own opinions."
"The bear knows seven songs and they are all about honey."
"How can I know, with certainty, that he is well and safe?"
"I wonder if you will even recognize me when you see me next time."
"The human mind was the strangest place, both home and exile. How could it hold on to something as elusive and intangible as a scent when it was capable of erasing concrete chunks of the past, block by block?"
"Bridges appear in our lives only when we are ready to cross them."
"A tree wraps itself around the remnants of the past."
"Grief is a language. We understand each other, people with troubled pasts."
"When you hold a skull in your hands, can you tell if it's Christian or Muslim? All that bloodshed, for what?"
"Nature was always talking, telling things, though the human ear was too limited to hear them."
"It remains to us plants to collect the untold, the unwanted."
"It is a map, the body of an ex-lover, pulling you into its depths and bringing you back to a part of yourself that you thought had been left behind sometime, somewhere."
"The flesh had a power of recall of its own, memory tattooed on skin, layer upon layer."
"Mass murder for personal profit, that's peculiar to our species."
"You are either an unsung hero or a glorious fool, I can’t decide."
"I have never understood why humans regard butterflies as fragile. Optimists they may be, but fragile, never!"
"What mattered was not the final destination but to be on the move, searching, changing, becoming."
"Sometimes people travel miles away from home just to be able to mourn."
"In life, unlike in books, we have to weave our stories out of threads as fine as the gossamer veins that run through a butterfly’s wings."
"Mosquitoes are humankind’s nemesis. They’ve killed half the humans who ever walked the earth."
"Some day this pain will be useful to you."
"If you weep for all the sorrows in this world, in the end you will have no eyes."
"Tribal hatreds don’t die; they just add new layers to hardened shells."
"Women are holding up the world, we don’t have time for monkey business!"
"If a stone falls on an egg, it is bad for the egg; if an egg falls on a stone, it is still bad for the egg."
"Well, never say amen to an impossible prayer."
"You want [women] to sacrifice themselves for the happiness of others, try to accommodate everyone and conform to beauty standards that aren’t based in reality. That’s unfair."
"We share almost ninety-nine per cent of our DNA with bonobos."
"Trees whose ancestors had experienced hardship reacted more swiftly and produced extra proteins, which they then used to protect and regenerate their cells."
"Your mother loved you very much, more than anything in this world. Her death has nothing to do with the absence of love."
"The tree was being strangled by its own roots. Because it was happening under the earth, it was undetectable."
"It’s called girdling. There can be many reasons behind it."
"There is a tree for every mood and every moment."
"In nature everything talks all the time."
"The voices of our motherlands never stop echoing in our minds."
"Legends, perhaps, but I do not belittle them."
"I believe in legends and in the unspoken secrets they try to gently convey."
"I wanted to continue to be anchored in love, the only thing that humans have yet to destroy."