Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.

My books always make the best-seller lists in Wolf Hole, Arizona, and Hanksville, Utah.

In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty.

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

There's another disadvantage to the use of the flashlight: like many other mechanical gadgets it tends to separate a man from the world around him. If I switch it on my eyes adapt to it and I can see only the small pool of light it makes in front of me; I am isolated. Leaving the flashlight in my pocket where it belongs, I remain a part of the environment I walk through and my vision though limited has no sharp or definite boundary.

The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others.

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.