Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

I always want to write something better than the last book.

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

People say you cant teach writing, but I think thats nonsense.

The problem is fundamental... It is as if a secret committee, now lost to history, has made a study of children and, having figured out what the greatest number were least disposed to declared that all of them should do it.

...Attempts at imitation would put the emphasis where it didn't belong. The goal was to improve the lives of others, not oneself.