The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).

For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.

Some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant.

To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.

I think that fear of the mob, the expectation that people, particularly poor and nonwhite people become mobs almost automatically in the absence of coercive authority, is inculcated by the media, the movies, and politicians.

I roam around a lot in my territory, but what I learn at one end inflects and opens up my understanding at the other.

...[Cabeza de Vaca] ceased to be lost not by returning but by turning into something else.