It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.

No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.

Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.

I believe... that security declines as security machinery expands.

By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.