Without the errors, wrong turns and blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth.

Adventure is putting one's ignorance into motion.

Somewhere lives a bad Cajun cook, just as somewhere must live one last ivory-billed woodpecker. For me, I don't expect ever to encounter either one.

The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.

With a nearly desperate sense of isolation and a growing suspicion that I lived in an alien land, I took to the road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected.

The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing one's self a fool.

You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad.