The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.

Everything he did was at least partial and often total bullshit” (402).

If you want to have friends, you have to remember that nobody's perfect.

Integrity's a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They're pure hyena.

How wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been so gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life, how wrong to have said no, again and again, instead of yes.

I'm not too concerned what happens to my books after I'm dead. But I am very concerned by what's going on with the culture of reading and writing nowadays.

I feel that working environmentalists are, in the main, happier than armchair environmentalists.