When men do not run they are likely to die prematurely from dysfunction of the heart and vascular systems or from disabling chronic disease.

Men are born human. What they must learn is to be an animal. If they learn otherwise it may kill them, and kill life on the planet.

The desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible.

To the desert go profits and hermits, through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.

Who would want to live in a world that is just not quite fatal?

The natural world is not only a set of constraints but of contexts within which we can more fully realize our dreams.

All around us, aspects of the modern world - diet, exercise, medicine, art, work, family, philosophy, economics, ecology, psychology - have begun a long circle back toward their former coherence. Whether they can arrive before the natural world is damaged beyond repair and madness destroys humanity, we cannot tell.