Writing is a suspension of life in order to re-create life

With their four-dimensional minds, and in their interdisciplinary ultra verbal way, geologists can wiggle out of almost anything.

Taking things from one source is plagiarism; taking things from several sources is research.

I can't stand a sentence until it sounds right.

Almost all Americans would recognize Anchorage, because Anchorage is that part of any city where the city has burst its seams and extruded Colonel Sanders.

The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone.

If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time. And then in a way you do not live at all, but in another way you live forever.