There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

War: First day in the U.S. Army, the government placed a Bible in my left hand, a bayonet in the other.

Art, science, philosophy, religion -- each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience.

When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best.

By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century.

Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs-anything-but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and other sanctums of our culture; we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places.

We spend more time working for our labor-saving machines than they do working for us.