Gardening is not a rational act.
Interpretation
Gardening reflects an emotional or instinctual connection to nature rather than a purely logical endeavor.
Margaret Atwood suggests that gardening goes beyond logic and reason; it is an act driven by deep-seated instincts and emotions. Engaging with nature in this way allows individuals to connect with the earth and their own inner selves, highlighting the irrational but fulfilling aspects of cultivating life.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the therapeutic benefits of gardening.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.
In the mountain, stillness surges up to explore its own height In the lake, movement stands still to contemplate its own depth.
Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with force and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength.
There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting.
The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour
The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
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