If all you do is think about what you need, you’re no better than an animal in the woods, and no smarter either. To be human, you’ve got to want. It makes you smarter and stronger.

— Dan Groat

If the forest has a day of fire and the heat of the flames does not consume a special tree, it will still be changed; charred, but still standing.

— Dan Groat

If you decide to take somebody on, don’t look behind you, because there won’t be anybody there. You’ll be all alone.

— Dan Groat

I had always been a boy in this place, and many of the trees and rocks and streams had been old men when I knew them. Some had died. All had changed. I knew that. I had changed the most.

— Dan Groat

In this country our principles should not be silent.

— Dan Groat

It made him wonder if all things taken from their home too soon lost some of their bloom.

— Dan Groat

It must be great to spend time in a spot and if you walk away, it’s so much better than before because of something you did.

— Dan Groat

It remains for you to save one before saving others, to lead one before leading others.

— Dan Groat

It’s a funny thing, one day you’re living and the next day you’re not sometimes, whether you have plans or not. Wishes and wants get trumped by the reaper every time. I don’t even know if I would want a warning if it was my time. I think I’d rather be surprised.

— Dan Groat

It’s as close to true freedom as I have come. Not freedom of, but freedom from; freedom from the debris of life that piles up and forces us to dig and dig for our original self, who we were once upon a time, innocent and wonderfully naïve, as authentically pure as a human can be.

— Dan Groat