So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.

A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.

The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

When I was young, a teacher had forbidden me to say "more perfect" because she said if a thing is perfect it can't be more so. But by now I had seen enough of life to have regained my confidence in it.

At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.

A river, though, has so many things to say that it is hard to know what it says to each of us.