There are two things that interest me: the relation of people to each other, and the relation of people to land.

Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

What a dull world if we knew all about geese!

When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: He could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.

He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.

Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.