Heavy blizzards start as a gentle and persistent snow.

Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.

...this marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is God's own signature on earth.

Because there were all kinds of hell - some were black and dirty, and some were silvery and high.

Not born to be rich, by 1981 I had nonetheless begun to use a PC that required for its operation the absorption of several hundred pages of protocols and the placement of very large floppy disks in the freezer to fix frequent crashes.

I had a period in my life, maybe a decade or so, in which I was involved in that kind of thing, associating with the elite of various segments of society. It always made me extremely uncomfortable. I couldn't wait to get out of there and change my clothes. The good part about that was getting home and changing into my regular clothes. Taking off the suit and the tie, taking off the tight shoes, and just relaxing. Being away from that stuff. It was stimulating, but I never liked it. I always felt it was a terrible, terrible burden.

Truth is no rounder than a horse's eye.