To be alive is to take risks; to be always safe and secure is death.

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.

Without stories, we are incomplete.

I procrastinate all morning. That's when I get my office work done and answer e-mails and see what's on the Internet and do laundry.

Nothing makes you feel more stupid than finding out you were wrong when you thought you were loved.

Whatever your relationship is to your sacred tradition in the West, you have some relationship to the Bible if only through the names of the characters.

When I saw her I was in love with her. Everything turned over inside of me. She looked toward the door, saw there was no one, then she sat on the side of the bed and leaned over and kissed me.

I believe in God; I'm not saying I'm highly religious.

I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.

Every home should have a room, or at least a nook with two chairs, where it is a sin punishable by immediate expulsion to speak of money, business, politics or the state of one's teeth.

I'll be in Hell before you start breakfast!

No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.