Freedom is no guarantee of anything. It is only defined today by what it is not. What it is takes forms strange and of infinite variety - bizarre as in a masquerade.

And blessed are they who have learned the rhythms of the invisible clock whose hours and minutes are immense and soundless. The great clock of the seasons and the years, and the small clock of the intuition, whose timing is guided by the heart.

The writer's advantage, in some respects, over those whose expression lies in other fields, is in the privilege of a double - sometimes a triple - living. Pleasure multiplied in the mirrors of words, and pain siphoned off in words.

Teach the legal rights of trees, the nobility of hills; respect the beauty of singularity, the value of solitude.

... love and fear increase together with a precision almost mathematical: the greater the love is then the greater the fear is.

pacifists lead a lonely life. Not even gathering together can take the place of that vast, warm sun of approval that is shed on motherhood, on law-abiding, on killing, and on making money. Someday will we come into our own? Well, motherhood may move into the shade. Law-abiding is going through a trauma. But killing and making money are good for a long, long time.

The question we do not see when we are young is whether we own pride or are owned by it.