Adventure is a path...Real adventure - self-determined , self-motivated, often risky - forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world.

Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.

Maps are essential. Planning a journey without a map is like building a house without drawings.

Kids are natural little outdoor people. It is we, the adults, who turn them into indoor people. If you don't get of fyour computer, why should they?

Give your kids responsibility. Once outside, let them lead, who cares if you get lost; it might be the best trip you've ever had.

Stop worrying about whether they can handle it. You want the truth? Your kid is hardier than you are... Kids are tough.

Wanderlust is incurable.

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.

Nature's voice and Nature's beauty---God's soothing and purifying angels of the soul---speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at such times as these.

The best way to look back at life fondly is to meet it - and those along your journey - warmly, kindly and mindfully

The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.

It is nearly always the most improbable things that really come to pass.

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.

I generally play strong people and scary people.

At DePauw, I was teaching writing and fiction. The things I wanted to teach, more than anything else, were form and theory of the novel, of narrative. I liked those classes.

I love stories. When I tell a story, I try to think of people sitting around a crackling campfire.

Taking smart risks can be very gratifying.