Once I climbed into a mountain lion's cage and she bounded at me and put her paw on my face, but she kept her claws withdrawn.

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.

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.

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

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

Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people they are an aperture through which wounds drain. The scapegoat of olden times, driven off for the bystanders sins, has become a tender thing, a running injury. There, running away is me: hurt it and you are hurting me.

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.