There are two kinds of writers: hustlers and sanctimonious hustlers.

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

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.

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.

It's incongruous that the older we get, the more likely we are to turn in the direction of religion. Less vivid and intense ourselves, closer to the grave, we begin to conceive of ourselves as immortal.

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

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.