You see things really different when your father is so intimately, so indisputably in charge of your continued existence on the planet.

My natural inclination is to think in scenes. So that's how I write, and the issue for me is usually: what to compress for speed.

I wasn't in a position that some other memoirists are, dealing with families who fed them meth, or kidnapped them, or did something that would make the writer not want to see that family again. I wanted to see my family. I wanted to celebrate them. I was proud of who we were, in the wilderness, floating down rapids or hiking over glaciers, and everywhere else.

The most reliable path to glory is base brute effort.

The tough thing is how to cultivate a life where the paramecium of happiness gets a lot of chances to get out and swim and make more paramecia. That seems like an obvious universal goal for most humans.

There are still things out there in the universe to contemplate and spend our lives chasing.

You see things really different when your father is so intimately, so indisputably in charge of your continued existence on the planet.