Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness.

Humility is a virtue when you have no other.

It is an author's most solemn obligation to honor truth. If the free and independent writer does not speak truth to power, who will?

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.

I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be.

That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.

To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.