in mad people fear goes on constantly, night and day, wearing one ditch in the mind that all thoughts must travel in.

Lord make me satisfied with small things. Make me content to live on the outside of life. God make me love the rind!

things that have cost more than they're worth leave a bitter taste. A taste of salt and sweat.

The things we felt most are hardest to put into words. Hate is always easier to speak of than love. How shall I make love go through the sieve of words and come out something besides a pulp?

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

The dead elm leaves hung like folded bats.

We are dying of preconceptions, outworn rules, decaying flags, venomous religions, and sentimentalities. We need a new world. We've wrenched up all the old roots. The old men have no roots. They don't know it. They just go on talking and flailing away and falling down on the young with their tons of dead weight and their power. For the power is still there, in their life-in-death. But the roots are dead, and the land is poisoned for miles around them.