To know something, then, we must be scrubbed raw, the fasting heart exposed.

To rise above treeline is to go above thought, and after, the descent back into bird song, bog orchids, willows, and firs is to sink into the preliterate parts of ourselves.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.

To trace the history of a river . . . is to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body.

A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree.

Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still.

I thought: to be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.

I like big, open, spare landscapes. There's lots of room. Nobody bothers you... I feel as if I can think there.

Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.

Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

What could you possibly hope to find in a cemetary?" The women said. "The dead tell no secrets and the living seldom come to visit them.

I love to buying books to create my sacred library.

I hate unbreakable alibis--they are usually the first to crack. --Hugo Anstead

You can never stop and as older people, we have to learn how to take leadership from the youth and I guess I would say that this is what I'm attempting to do right now.

Maintaining healthy forests is essential to those who make a living from the land and for those of us who use them for recreational purposes.

The human being who lives only for himself finally reaps nothing but unhappiness. Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies.

The extra opinions and the extra praise is just a bonus, it's not the main thing. The main thing is how I feel about myself. And I feel really good about myself.

I'm a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale...

I believe that artists should be part of the culture. I think that my work clearly bears that out.

I'll continue on the path I've been taking, feet on the ground, describing people's lives, describing people's emotions, writing from the standpoint of the ordinary people.