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

In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth.

I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river with its spray in my face and watched it thunder into foam, smooth to green glass over sunken rocks, shatter to foam again. I was fascinated by how it sped by and yet was always there; its roar shook both the earth and me.

I am terribly glad to be alive; and when I have wit enough to think about it, terribly proud to be a man and an American, with all the rights and privileges that those words connote; and most of all I am humble before the responsibilities that are also mine. For no right comes without a responsibility, and being born luckier than most of the world's millions, I am also born more obligated.

The brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks.

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.

Are writers reporters, prophets, crazies, entertainers, preachers, judges, what?