When you sign on to be an activist in northwest Montana, people in the grocery store will avoid eye contact, particularly if they're hanging out with outspoken opponents to your views.

To not pursue the thing one wants would be a waste of one's life.

There are none among us who have not been, even for a moment, cruel to those whom we love most, as if unable, in that moment, to shoulder any longer the magnificent weight and burden, the responsibility, of that love.

The mountains have always been here, and in them, the bears.

My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.

Fit in where you don't: make your own space..be different..don't give in. Exist somewhere you're not suppose to, or where you don't want to. Be your own men; do what you want, and don't hurt anybdoy

The Ploughmen is part inspired fever-dream, part adventure story, a lyric parable of not just goodand evil but of the vast and beautiful and often lonely country in-between. Kim Zupan is a wonder.