But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and more precious.

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

The study of history, while it does not endow with prophecy, may indicate lines of probability.

When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.

Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it.

We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.