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.

No birdcall is the musical equal of a clarinet blown with panache.

To relive the relationship between owner and slave we can consider how we treat our cars and dogs - a dog exercising a somewhat similar leverage on our mercies and an automobile being comparable in value to a slave in those days

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

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer.

Once I climbed into a mountain lion's cage and she bounded at me and put her paw on my face, but she kept her claws withdrawn.