Human lives seldom conform to the conventions of fiction. Chekhov says that it is in the beginnings and endings of stories that we are most tempted to lie. I know what he means, and I agree.

National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.

We simply need that wild country available to us... For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time.

Whatever landscape a child is exposed to early on, that will be the sort of gauze through which he or she will see all the world afterwards.

Be proud of every scar on your heart, each one holds a lifetime’s worth of lessons.

She had rooms in her mind that she would not look into.

Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.

Hard writing makes easy reading.

Some are born in their place, some find it, some realize after long searching that the place they left is the one they have been searching for.

Every green natural place we save saves a fragment of our sanity and gives us a little more hope that we have a future.

Taking positive control of your daily thoughts is the only way that you can discover your true self.

I had a standing arrangement with God: I'd agree to believe in Him -barely- as long as He let me sleep in on Sundays.

Concentrate on material gains. Whatever your opponent gives you take, unless you see a good reason not to.

I've since become really good at overwhelming myself.

The proof of liberal virtue is generousity with other people's money.

People who believe in themselves and in a cause greater than themselves can achieve great things-as long as they have a well-intentioned leader to point them in the right direction.

We haven't learned to be the majority party. We haven't learned how to lead. We're still stuck in the opposition.

It is the members of this business elite . . . that pose the greatest danger to our American way of life. They are the ones who've bought and paid for members of both political parties. . . .

Conclusive facts are inseparable from inconclusive except by a head that already understands and knows.

If a young man at the age of twenty-three can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder.