A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth

Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.

The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.

The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, or they become legends.

In a life properly lived, you're a river.

Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.

Death steals everything except our stories.

Fishing makes us less the hostages to the horrors of making a living.

I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

A novel according to my taste, does not come into the moderately good class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love - and if a pretty woman, all the better.

I love kids and I maintain that they are our future, that we adults owe them the ability to achieve their potential and that we don't own this planet. We hold it in trust for them.

At 26, I felt myself a victim rather than a victor in the realm of pictures.

You might be a redneck if the receptionist checks the rat traps at your place of business.

That's a beautiful purse. I carry a satchel.

Hope is an adventure, a going forward, a confident search for a rewarding life.

Marx was wrong--religion is not the opiate of the masses, baseball is.

You don't need a reason to forgive... If you want to go on with someone, that is what you do.

Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.

Let the enemy rage at the gate; let him knock, pound, scream, howl; let him do his worst. We know for certain that he cannot enter our soul except by the door of our consent.