There are only two kinds of books -- good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time.

I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself.

Industrial tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.

The night I filled an inside straight: Even a blind hog's gonna root up an acorn once in a while.

In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military- industrial civilization will soon collapse.

Great art is indefinable but that's all right; it exists anyway.