Indeed, if "biology is chemistry with history," as somebody has said, then nature writing is biology with love.

Sophistication" is another word for that inventive mix of tolerance, resilience, and resourcefulness city people develop.

There are two kinds of writers: hustlers and sanctimonious hustlers.

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.

We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.

Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse?

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.