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.

Every time. You know why? I want to fail. I work like a dog for twenty years so I'll have the supreme pleasure of failing. Never knew anybody like that, did you? I'm very cunning. I plan it in advance. I fool myself right up to the last minute, and then the time comes and I know how cunningly I've been planning it all the time. I've been a failure all my life.

That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.

Faith can reclaim deserts as well as move mountains.

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

A writer is an organism that will go on writing even after its heart has been cut out.

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