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.

A writer's work is to witness things.

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

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.

If human nature eventually is going to take the place of nature everywhere, those of us who have been naturalists will have to transpose the faith in nature which is inherent in the profession to a faith in man-if necessary, man alone in the world.

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.

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.