Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing each other out. We set this house on fire, forgetting that we live within. (from "To a Meadowlark," for M.L. Smoker)

The simple act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to the human race than all the collective governments in the history of earth

Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.

The wilderness does not make you forget your normal life so much as it removes the distractions for proper remembering.

The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.

Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, or they become legends.

In a life properly lived, you're a river.

Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.

Death steals everything except our stories.

Fishing makes us less the hostages to the horrors of making a living.

I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.

The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening.

Anxiety is that range of distress which attends willing what cannot be willed.

I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter.

Text messaging is just the most recent focus of people's anxiety; what people are really worried about is a new generation gaining control of what they see as their language.

By that time I was thinking a little about pro ball and hopeful that someone would draft me.

Start-ups don't die, they commit suicide.

Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.

Eros seizes and shakes my very soul like the wind on the mountain shaking ancient oaks.

Nothing in the world glorifies God so much as simple rest of faith in what God’s Word says.

Life is made up of danger and heartbreak, I laugh in the face of both!