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

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.

American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging.

Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.

Thanks to the growing strength of environmental organizations, there will always be some back country to provide us with a touch of wonder and a breath of fresh air.

There is a sense in which we are all each other's consequences