Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn't brotherly -- who lived mostly under his parents' roof . . . who advocated one day's work and six days "off" as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown . . . is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.

Men often compete with one another until the day they die. Comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.

It would be hard to define chaos better than as a world where children decide they don't want to live.

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

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.

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

No birdcall is the musical equal of a clarinet blown with panache.