Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness.
Wallace StegnerValues, both those that we approve and those that we don't, have roots as deep as creosote rings, and live as long and grow as slowly
Wallace StegnerTowns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.
Wallace StegnerThere must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance, said the Ellen Ward of my dream, that woman I hate and fear. I am sure she meant some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning together from the vertical which produces the false arch.
Wallace StegnerSomething will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.
Wallace Stegner