Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.

There is nothing in nature that can't be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration.

All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call "aware"--an almost untranslatable word meaning something like "beauty tinged with sadness.

How odd it is that sewing is thought to be 'women's work' when surgeons, sailors, and cowboys sew too. Yet how many female thoracic surgeons are there? And if precision motor activities are thought to be performed better by women, why wouldn't they make better surgeons too?

Animals give us their constant, unjaded faces, and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals.

The retreat and disappearance of glaciers—there are only 160,000 left—means we're burning libraries and damaging the planet, possibly beyond repair. Bit by bit, glacier by glacier, rib by rib, we're living the Fall.

I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.