Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.

Personal inspection at zero altitude. The stories come from my life - if not my own experiences, then about topics and subjects that interest me.

He had to keep thinking of them because if he forgot them and did not think of them they might forget about him. And he had to keep hoping.

If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books. The book needs you.

It was as though I had been dying of thirst and the librarian had handed me a five gallon bucket of water. I drank and drank. The only reason I am here and not in prison is because of that woman. I was a loser, but she showed me the power of reading.

I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.

I am happiest in the brush and by myself - whether that's the woods of northern Minnesota or the wilds of Alaska behind a dogteam, picking through the foothills of the mountains by my ranch in New Mexico on horseback, or on the ship of my sailboat on the Pacific - so I guess it made sense to me that both Brian and Samuel would find their challenges and adventures, if that's what you call them, in the woods.