I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.

When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue.

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings.

... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree... Of course I have to give up, but by then I'm half crazy with the wonder of it--the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.

Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?