It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.

If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.

Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position.

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

How could anything non-controversial be of intellectual interest to grown-ups?

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.