The response to my books from my East Coast friends has been wildly various, running the gamut from 'bad' to 'very bad.' (Is there another gamut?)

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

What’s the point of something virtual if it doesn’t end up being real?

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

Nixon's attempts to order subversion of various departments was bound to come out in some form.

I love filmmaking, and I love the process. And I would rather do nothing else. It's a privilege to be able to paint such big pictures, so to speak.

If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.

To find the Tao, there is nowhere you need to search. If it is not inside you, it is not the Tao.

I will still carry on changing all the time.

I'm not a quitter. I believe in following things through.

Let's put it this way: if you need to ask a lawyer whether what you do is "right" or not, you are morally corrupt. Let's not go there. We don't base our morality on law.

Many a beggar at the crossway, or gray-haired shepherd on the plain, hath more of the end of all wealth than hundreds who multiply the means.