My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.

Defiance is beautiful. The defiance of power, especially great or overwhelming power, exalts and glorifies the rebel.

Late in August the lure of the mountains becomes irresistible. Seared by the everlasting sunfire, I want to see running water again, embrace a pine tree, cut my initials in the bark of an aspen, get bit by a mosquito, see a mountain bluebird, find a big blue columbine, get lost in the firs, hike above timberline, sunbathe on snow and eat some ice, climb the rocks and stand in the wind at the top of the world on the peak of Tukuhnikivats.

I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.

The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.

Are people more important than the grizzly bear? Only from the point of view of some people.