The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space.

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

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.

It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.

There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline.

When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.