Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.

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

Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic....So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air.

I'm a fastidious sort of fellow, fond of watermelon and buckbrush nuts.

The consolation of reading biography: Most great men have led lives even more miserable than our own.