Diana’s Innermost House survives from a time in all our lives before the beginning, as a memory before remembering. Her life is a gentle reminder, no more. The reality of Diana’s Life in the Woods reminds us that we all have an Innermost Life.
In the real words of real people,
this was the reality of Innermost House
"My wife recently sent me a photo of this small home... without a description or an explanation. She knew it didn't need one. I looked at the photo for a long time and felt the weight of a hectic life being washed away. . . The small board-and-batten clad cabin. . . evoked a wave of peace in me. I have seen "tiny" homes before, but none struck me in the way this one did."
— Rob Yagid, Editor in Chief, Fine Homebuilding
“For seven years Diana and Michael Lorence lived a secret life in an unelectrified, twelve-by-twelve-foot house they built themselves, hidden away in the woods of Northern California, in a world lit only by fire. The Lorences. . . explore the meaning of architecture, place, and home.”
— The College of William & Mary
“If we wish to know what Henry Thoreau would have to say about our modern world, Diana Lorence and her Innermost House are perhaps our best answer.”
— Allen Harding, Thoreau Society
"The other day I found a real intense peace sitting in front of this fire. . . . Now it’s a few days later and I’m still trying to pin down what makes Innermost House so special...the deep peace... The light... Freedom from outside, worldly distractions... The simplicity... The fact that Diana and Michael have lived this type of life for seven years makes their personalities and conversations a part of that secluded and secret atmosphere. The back to basics that we all crave. I can’t really explain Innermost House but there is something there (spiritual, refreshing, unexplainable). No way to nail it down and no way to really capture it..."
— Kent Griswold, Owner/Editor, Tiny House Blog
"It's really an amazing story!"
— Newell Turner, Editor-in-Chief, House Beautiful Magazine
"Innermost House is so small it fits into a narrow space between standing oaks. Yet it captivates our eyes. In a forest, without electricity, you might imagine a wild life of hundreds of years ago. But her humble house creates an atmosphere that is more intellectual than modern commercial buildings and as solemn as shrines. "Innermost" means "the most internal part" or "profound"...It is as meaningless to speak about the numerical size of her house as it is of measuring the size of space in the human mind. Diana's life is our dream."
— Takamura Tomoya, Simple and Free in a Ten Square Meter House
"Perhaps the most intense Tiny House I’ve ever come across is Diana and Michael Lorence’s Innermost House."
— Yule Heibel's Post Studio
"When I first saw Michael and Diana's northern California home, I felt I had stepped back in time. But the longer I stayed, the more I felt the place really defied time. Diana says you enter timeless time here, and without the distractions of modern life, it's easy to forget about everything but the moment. It reminds me of something Emerson once wrote, 'We ascribe Beauty to that which is simple, which has no superfluous parts, which exactly answers its end, which stands related to all things.'"
— Kirsten Dirksen, Founder/Editor, Faircompanies
"The Lorences’ dwelling in the northern California woods embodies simplicity at its finest."
— Yahoo Homepage
“Six years ago, Diana and Michael Lorence built and took up full-time residence in a 12-foot-cube with a sleeping loft, porch, and beautiful Shaker-like detailing—but no electricity—in the mountains of northern California. What were they thinking? A very small domestic space is conceived for the purpose of what Wordsworth called 'plain living and high thinking’. . . ‘It enlarges and amplifies and intensifies everything,’ says Diana. ‘Here I feel all my loose and wandering thoughts are gathered up and made whole. It's an antidote to a world of distractions.’"
— Shax Riegler, “Living Large in Small Spaces,” House Beautiful Magazine
"INNERMOST HOUSE: a 'concentrated life' of simplicity and conversation..."
— Kiplinger, “10 Tiny Houses You'll Love Big Time"
“For seven years Diana Lorence lived a hidden life in an un-electrified, twelve-by-twelve-foot house she built herself, hidden in the woods of Northern California, in a world lit only by fire. . . At Innermost House Ms. Lorence heated her home, cooked her food, and boiled her water over an open fire, illuminating the dark woodland nights with beeswax candles. Like Thoreau before her, she ‘went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’”
— Berkeley Public Library
“This unelectrified small house. . . in the woods in Northern California looks beautifully crafted. Its owner, Diana Lorence, writes: ‘It is the latest of many very small houses my husband and I have occupied over twenty-five years, all for the same reason -- to make possible a simple life of reflection and conversation." The house, in fact, was designed in every detail with the idea of facilitating meaningful conversation, she says.
— The Oregonian
“...I had the opportunity to meet a lovely woman who embodied a simple lifestyle...I was impressed with this woman and her husband who elected to live a prayerful, meditative and uncomplicated lifestyle... What would that be like to live so simply?"
— Cheryl Floyd, Publisher, Natural Awakenings Magazine
