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.

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.

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.

If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy.

Country people tend to consider that they have a corner on righteousness and to distrust most manifestations of cleverness, while people in the city are leery of righteousness but ascribe to themselves all manner of cleverness.

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.