Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.

The developers and entrepreneurs must somehow be taught a new vocabulary of values.

A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.

The sexual revolution transformed the American West: Now even cowboys can get laid.

Places: a cold, bleak, lonely day on the rim at Muley Point, Utah. And the heart-cracking loveliness of the blood-smeared, bitter, incomprehensible slaughterhouse of a world.

This world may be only illusion -- but it's the only illusion we've got.