My family, although they’re very large on both my parents’ sides, they don’t know much about their family tree. Occasionally, they try to dig, but they can’t get very far, and it’s baffling. In Dublin, it seems that so many public records were wiped out; it’s proven to be very difficult, so I know very little.
When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it – a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand – as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it’s bad art.
The matriarchs of my family loved to bake, and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Baking became something I did every day; it became a time where my creative and nurturing side took stage.
Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job – this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce – that’s when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.
There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.
I suffered a lot when I tried to make sanitary napkins and promote the idea. My family – including my mother and wife – deserted me. Villagers even tied me to a tree and beat me. But after seeing me successful now, they come and say that they all knew that I would become famous one day.
If I start tracing, I bet I will find a writer in my family tree.
When I was preparing for the film for tree weeks, with David Cronenberg, I had a lady friend come over.
I think that if you shake the tree, you ought to be around when the fruit falls to pick it up.
Our flying squirrel is in no proper sense a flyer. On the ground, he is more helpless than a chipmunk, because less agile. He can only sail or slide down a steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of another.
Whether it’s a leaf from a tree, the supermarket or person, everything is art and movement, it’s all inspiration.
Bahia is the Amazon’s geographical next-of-kin: the same climate, forest canopy, diverse floor. But there is no wild cacao; the tree was introduced, most likely by a Frenchman, Louis Frederick Warneaux, who, in 1746, sowed seeds near one of Bahia’s large rivers.
What is a fish without a river? What is a bird without a tree to nest in? What is an Endangered Species Act without any enforcement mechanism to ensure their habitat is protected? It is nothing.
Friendship is a sheltering tree.
Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day. If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day, it doesn’t matter if it’s an oak or a redwood; eventually, the tree has to fall down.
I wanted people to say that our music sounds like Porcupine Tree, not that it sounds like King Crimson.
The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.
This might be really weird, but The Body Shop has a tea tree oil stick that you can put on zits, and it makes your zits go away.
I’m writing a book called ‘The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus’ about the maths of Christmas: how to set up a secret Santa so it’s totally fair; how to decorate your tree mathematically; how to win at Monopoly.
Stunted varieties were generally chosen, particularly if they had the side branches opposite or regular, for much depends upon this; a one-sided tree is of no value in the eyes of the Chinese.
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
I love Africa, especially Botswana. I could see myself retiring to a little tree house there one day.
I like kind of natural, woodsy earth tones. I like patchouli. I like tobacco. I like sandalwood. I like tree resin. I’m not a huge fan of citrus – I like things that are kind of moodier and… more deeper base notes.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
When you live in the shadow of a big tree, you have to run twice as fast to get into the sunlight.
If I could only have one grooming tool, it would be floss. I don’t want to have broken Cheetos in my teeth. To protect myself from the sun, I can find shade under a tree. To moisturize my skin, I could get really sweaty and then just rub it on myself. But how are you going to clean between your teeth without floss?
My brother Steve was always considered the naughty one but I used to drive my parents to despair because I had no fear. Id climb a tree without testing the branches and I was always getting into scrapes.
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
I write most of my music in my house, which is like a tree house.
My grandfather built my first hoop. It was a peach basket up against a tree, and we played in the dirt. I couldn’t have been more than 6 when he put it up, and I just started playing.
To make a book convincing, it’s less important that the right tree be in the right place than that the characters are emotionally real.
Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
‘Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.
We celebrated Christmas. Not religiously, but we did the tree and the lights. Hannukah always seemed not quite as thrilling – Sorry to my Jewish brothers and sisters! But when you’re a kid, Santa and all that, you know, that really trumps the menorah. So we did Christmas.
My sister and I were very adventurous. We’d play in the park across the road in our imaginary tree house for hours on end and come home on our bikes when it was dark.
I got my first professional job at Harvard, at the Loeb Drama Center, and I remember sitting on campus one day under a tree – I was doing ‘Threepenny Opera.’ I was reading a book, and the light caught me, and I thought, ‘I want to be in the movies.’
I do this system called TRX. It was developed by a Navy SEAL and is basically a simple cord that you can wrap around something anywhere, anytime, and you use your body weight as resistance. We installed one in our home gym, but you can also attach it to a tree. It’s very easy to travel with.
I come from Big Tree, and the people of Big Tree are Bannon Republicans.
I like to think of thoughts as living blossoms borne by the human tree.
My formal speaking career began before a group of 10 third-graders. We drew pictures of my home in Rwanda. I told them about my mother’s huge garden and our mango tree. The lessons I taught were simple. Play nicely. Take care of plants. Take care of people.
The term ‘natural resources’ confuses people. ‘Natural resources’ are not like a finite number of gifts under the Christmas tree. Nature is given, but resources are created.
A tree’s wood is also its memoir.
There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.
Porcupine Tree is a band, and it’s not up to me where the band goes – it’s between the manager, our agent, and the band as a whole.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
I hope to get the general public listening, the ones curious to see the woman who sat in the tree for two years.
Every year before a big competition, I get hurt doing stuff I should not be doing. One year it was my little brother’s 12th birthday. We all played hide-and-seek late at night. I climbed up a 30-foot tree, thinking he’d never catch me. I tripped and fell on one of the branches and I hit my head.
I’m just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.
I done got hit with a belt, a toy, a stick, extension cord, a switch off a tree, whatever. At the same time, my pain tolerance went up… It came to the point where it built toughness… Yeah, it hurt, but I wasn’t scared. I knew what was coming. Wasn’t nothing I wasn’t prepared for.
The ripest peach is highest on the tree.
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
I had a year-round Christmas tree with nothing but colored vinyl 45s hanging on it, like, old Elvis records and stuff.
Yes, you could call me a tree hugger, an environmentalist, an eco-warrior even – except I don’t spend my life in a kaftan, smoking joss sticks and walking a skinny dog on a piece of string.
I have the deepest respect for Terrence Malick and greatly enjoyed helping him on ‘Tree of Life.’ I consider him to be a good personal friend and professional contemporary.
