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.

Men often compete with one another until the day they die. Comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.

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.

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.

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.