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

Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same.

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.

Our loneliness makes us avid column readers these days.

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.

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