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.

Catch and release fishing may be cruelty masquerading as political correctness

I used to sit in class and listen to the terms come floating down the room like paper airplanes.

A writer has to have some kind of compulsive drive to do his work. If you don't have it, you'd better find another kind of work, because it's the only compulsion that will drive you through the psychological nightmares of writing.

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.

Nonfiction-wha t the hell, that just says, this is nongrapefruit we're having this morning.

Travel by canoe is not a necessity, and will nevermore be the most efficient way to get from one region to another, or even from one lake to another anywhere. A canoe trip has become simply a rite of oneness with certain terrain, a diversion off the field, an art performed not because it is a necessity but because there is value in the art itself.