Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

Summer is when we believe, all of a sudden, that if we just walked out the back door and kept on going long enough and far enough we would reach the Rocky Mountains.

A writer's work is to witness things.

Black bears, though, are not fearsome. I encountered one on the road to my house in Vermont, alone at night. I picked up two stones just in case, but I wasn't afraid of him. I felt a hunter's exhilaration and a brotherly feeling.

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.

Man is different from animals in that he speculates, a high-risk activity.

The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original design upon an invented ocean.