You don't have to know anything about baseball to respond to Babe Ruth because he's just this magnificent human being. And a really good story because he was this kid who grew up essentially as an orphan, you know, had a tough life, and then he became the most successful baseball player ever. But he was also a really good guy.

Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings. They make you feel small & confused & vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs. Stand in a desert or prairie & you know you are in a big space. Stand in the woods and you only sense it. They are vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.

You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand.

Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.

Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

The English invented cricket to make other human endeavors look interesting.

It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.