There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer.

A writer's work is to witness things.

There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly I couldn't talk at all.

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.

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

A mountain with a wolf on it stands a little taller.

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.