The Westerner is less a person than a continuing adaptation. The West is less a place than a process.

No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one, no clock spins like a clock whose days are all alike.

I consider the integrity of the material to be of greater value than any message I might want to get across.

What is such a resource worth? Anything it costs. If we never hike it or step into its shade, if we only drive by occasionally and see the textures of green mountainside change under wind and sun, or the fog move soft feathers down the gulches, or the last sunset on the continent redden the sky beyond the ridge, we have our money's worth. We have been too efficient at destruction; we have left our souls too little space to breathe in. Every green natural place we save saves a fragment of our sanity and gives us a little more hope that we have a future.

Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.

We are the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.

We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.