There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and smile.

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.

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

If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can't go at dawn and not many places he can't go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking - one sport you shouldn't have to reserve a time and a court for.

We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.

City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.

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