Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell E. Berryis an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written many novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 August 1934
CityHenry County, KY
CountryUnited States of America
An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.
It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.
We have forgotten that Vietnam, and Iraq resent being invaded and know the ground better than we do.
Those who say Islam is a warlike religion must ask if Christianity has been as well.
Monsanto doesn't care about feeding the world. We have to think about the wage slavery of migrant workers and salary slavery of those who are desperately unhappy.
Community, then, is an indispensable term in any discussion of the connection between people and land. A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation. In speaking of community, then, we are speaking of a complex connection not only among human beings or between humans and their homeland but also between human economy and nature, between forest or prairie and field or orchard, and between troublesome creatures and pleasant ones. All neighbors are included.
The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance-almost is the revelation of ignorance.
Our obsession with security is a measure of the power we have granted the future to hold over us.
Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous.
The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.
The form of a poem is invisible. A poem is not an "object." This is hard to accept in a mechanical age.
I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men....
All we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right thing today.