Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.

To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves.

To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.

A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.

I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.

Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.

Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

Walking is also an ambulation of mind.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

India is a place where colour is doubly bright. Pinks that scald your eyes, blues you could drown in.

God will be present whether asked or not.

The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction.

Rarely they rise by virtue's aid who lie plunged in the depth of helpless poverty.

Wisdom is founded on memory; happiness on forgetfulness.

The Navy is very old and very wise.

Save the time of the reader, for it is valuable

The Greeks got into Troy by trying, my pretties; everything's done by trying.

In trial or difficulty I have recourse to Mother Mary, whose glance alone is enough to dissipate every fear.