The mountains have always been here, and in them, the bears.

How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden.

My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.

Nothing will get you into trouble so deep or as sad as faith.

I've heard it said that when you die you enter a room of bright light, and that you can smell bread baking just around the corner.

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

Ive lost much of my heart and the spark or fire that once created, or produced, the art of fiction.

When you sign on to be an activist in northwest Montana, people in the grocery store will avoid eye contact, particularly if they're hanging out with outspoken opponents to your views.

Fit in where you don't: make your own space..be different..don't give in. Exist somewhere you're not suppose to, or where you don't want to. Be your own men; do what you want, and don't hurt anybdoy

To not pursue the thing one wants would be a waste of one's life.

Nature, and the original system that created us, must always remain somehow with us, the bedrock of our movements and actions. What is our duty? To live a life.

ATHEIST is really a thoroughly honest, unambiguous term, it admits of no paltering and no evasion, and the need of the world, now as ever, is for clear-cut issues and unambiguous speech.

Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.

I don't know a single person who truly seems to bear the mark of God's presence and power in his or her life who hasn't been asked by God to be obedient in a way that was dramatically painful.

Forest, I fear you! In my ruined heart your roaring wakens the same agony as in cathedrals when the organ moans and from the depths I hear that I am damned.

Yes, life is a woman!

We must work together to save and strengthen Social Security not just for my father's generation but also for my daughters' generation.

In the Jewish religion it says - in the time of deepest darkest night act as if the morning has already come

So there are different examples of fairy tales, and sometimes I believe in them and sometimes I don't.

Look, when I got in trouble in school I got in trouble at home. Now when kids get in trouble at school, the teacher gets in trouble. So the families are important.