Top 30 Jean Craighead George Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I love to travel, but when I really want to escape, I read a book.”

— Jean Craighead George

2. “I throw back my head, and, feeling free as the wind, breathe in the fresh mountain air. Although I am heavy-hearted, my spirits are rising. To walk in nature is always good medicine.”

— Jean Craighead George

Featured in: Medicine Quotes

3. “To Squanto, as to all Native Americans, the land did not belong to the people, people belonged to the land.”

— Jean Craighead George

4. “There is something all life has in common, and when I know what it is I shall know myself.”

— Jean Craighead George

5. “Ask nature questions, and you will get answers.”

— Jean Craighead George

6. “Chicken is Good! It tastes like chicken.”

— Jean Craighead George

7. “Change your ways when fear seizes,” he had said, “for it usually means you are doing something wrong.”

— Jean Craighead George

8. “I must say this now about that first fire. It was magic. Out of dead tinder and grass and sticks came a live warm light. It cracked and snapped and smoked and filled the woods with brightness. It lighted the trees and made them warm and friendly. It stood tall and bright and held back the night.”

— Jean Craighead George

9. “When fear seizes, change what you are doing. You are doing something wrong.”

— Jean Craighead George

10. “Cat talk is a complicated, self-centered language. If you speak to your cat first, it probably won’t speak back. Cats initiate conversations.”

— Jean Craighead George

11. “See that falcon? Hear those white-throated sparrows? Smell that skunk? Well, the falcon takes the sky, the white-throated sparrow takes the low bushes, the skunk takes the earth... I take the woods.”

— Jean Craighead George

12. “We humans will never know how meadows or mountains smell, but deer and horses and pigs do. Bando sniffs deeply and shakes his head. We were left out when it comes to smelling things, he says. I would love to be able to smell a mountain and follow my nose to it.”

— Jean Craighead George

13. “When the wolves are gone there will be too many caribou grazing the grass and the lemmings will starve. Without the lemmings the foxes and birds and weasels will die. Their passing will end smaller lives upon which even man depends, whether he knows it or not, and the top of the world will pass into silence.”

— Jean Craighead George

14. “Charlie Wind once told me we must keep the animals on Earth, for they know everything: how to keep warm, predict the storms, live in darkness or blazing sun, how to navigate the skies, to organize societies, how to make chemicals and fireproof skins. The animals know the Earth as we do not.”

— Jean Craighead George

15. “Hunger is a funny thing. It has a kind of intelligence of it’s own.”

— Jean Craighead George

16. “Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”

— Jean Craighead George

17. “Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning.”

— Jean Craighead George

18. “I don’t know why, but this seemed like one of the nicest things I had learned in the woods – that earthworms, lowly, confined to the darkness of the earth, could make just a little stir in the world.”

— Jean Craighead George

19. “The scenes and events were beautiful color spots in her memory.”

— Jean Craighead George

20. “Let’s face it, Thoreau; you can’t live in America today and be quietly different. If you are going to be different, you are going to stand out, and people are going to hear about you; and in your case, if they hear about you, they will remove you to the city or move to you and you won’t be different anymore.”

— Jean Craighead George

21. “Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning. When the sky lightened, when the birds awoke, I knew I would never again see anything so splendid as the round red sun coming up over the earth.”

— Jean Craighead George

22. “Wolves are brotherly,” he said. “They love each other, and if you learn to speak to them, they will love you too.”

— Jean Craighead George

23. “Yes, you are Eskimo,” he had said. “And never forget it. We live as no other people can, for we truly understand the earth.”

— Jean Craighead George

24. “Maybe the Europeans once thought the earth was flat, but the Eskimos always knew it was round. One only needed to look at the earth’s relatives, the sun and the moon, to know that.”

— Jean Craighead George

25. “To be a writer you should read, write and talk to people, hear their knowledge, hear their problems. Be a good listener. The rest will come.”

— Jean Craighead George

26. “The climate warmed. Wild grasses, flowers and trees took root in the land behind the huge rock. In time, their growing and dying made deep rich loam on which a magnificent forest grew. Into the forest came bear, deer, brightly colored birds, and the Pawtuxets, a tribe of the Wampanoag, The People of the Dawn.”

— Jean Craighead George

27. “It seemed marvelous to see life pump through that strange little body of feathers, wordless noises, milk eyes – much as life pumped through me.”

— Jean Craighead George

28. “There the old Eskimo hunters she had known in her childhood thought the riches of life were intelligence, fearlessness, and love. A man with these gifts was rich and was a great spirit who was admired in the same way that the gussaks admired a man with money and goods.”

— Jean Craighead George

29. “Won’t everything be all right if she’s free?”

— Jean Craighead George

30. “That turtle is fearless. She has to be. She carries the Earth on her back.”

— Jean Craighead George

31. “The lamp I am writing by is deer fat poured into a turtle shell with a strip of my old city trousers for a wick.”

— Jean Craighead George

32. “There is an old Indian legend that says the Earth rests on the back of the quiet turtle, who carries all our troubles and woes.”

— Jean Craighead George

33. “Scrub mussels in spring water. Dump them into boiling water with salt. Boil five minutes. Remove and cool in the juice. Take out meat. Eat by dipping in acorn paste flavored with a smudge of garlic, and green apples.”

— Jean Craighead George

34. “I still can’t believe that animals don’t understand why delicious food is in such a ridiculous spot.”

— Jean Craighead George