Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains...

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, as a healer of misery, as a messenger of wonder, as an architect of peace.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.

No matter how politely one says it, we owe our existence to the farts of blue-green algae.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

The heart is a museum, filled with the exhibits of a lifetime's loves.

We live on the leash of our senses. There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.

old stories are like old friends (...) you have to visit them from time to time.

There are things which cannot be carried through even with the good will of everybody concerned

I am not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.

Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.

Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

My mother is Ukrainian. She immigrated to the U.S. from Canada as a child.

I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time and that region is my landscape.

An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.

Ah, now, don't cry over lost years and forgetfulness. The tales tell what they can. The rest is for us to learn.

If you don't like me, there must be something wrong with you.