People need responsibility. They resist assuming it, but they cannot get along without it.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.

After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.

The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.