To try to save for everyone, for the hostile and independent as well as the committed, some of the health that flows down across the green ridges from the skyline, and some of the beauty and spirit that are still available to any resident of the valley who has a moment and the wit to lift up his eyes unto the hills.

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

Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.

The life we all live is amateurish and accidental; it begins in accident and proceeds by trial and error toward dubious ends.

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

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

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