The absurd vanity of metaphysicians who like to imagine that they create the world by thinking about it.

Come with me, the river said, close your eyes and quiet your limbs and float with me into the wonder and mystery of the canyons, see the unknown and the little known, look upon the stone gods face to face, see Medusa, drink my waters, hear my song, feel my power, come along and drift with me toward the distant, ultimate and legendary sea.

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

Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything.

Life is cruel? Compared to what?

Romanticism was more than merely an alternative to a sterile classicism; romanticism made possible, especially in art, a great expansion of the human consciousness.

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.