Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. And an exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall.

If I were to offer any advice to young writers, it would be this: be discriminating and be discerning about the work you set for yourself. That done, be the untutored traveler, the eager reader, the enthusiastic listener. Put what you learn together carefully, and then write thoughtfully, with respect both for the reader and your sources.

To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.

One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse.

The land gets inside of us; and we must decide one way or another what this means, what we will do about it.

The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.

The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.