Are you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer.

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

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

Values, 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

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.

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.

Any life will provide the material for writing, if it is attended to.