You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it.

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.

Love must risk all or perish.

Friendship can be obtained from anyone at any time. It knows no difference between age, gender, or even species.

I think beauty is rarely worth the trouble.” Shahrzad gripped Irsa’s hand tighter in sisterly solidarity. “But I am worth a great deal more than what you see.

I don't wake up each morning saying, 'Oh, wow, it's me. I think I'm the cat's meow. I'm the best.'

I don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.

It is only when you realize that you are mortal and yet immortal simultaneously that you begin to realize that the beautiful incongruities of existence aren't incongruous at all, but rather perfect.

We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.

I do not live to play, but I play in order that I may live, and return with greater zest to the labors of life.

Official history is believing the murderers at their word.

I think part of the success which Structuralist or post-Structuralist thought in critical theory has had in literary studies in American universities is due to a theoretical vacuum.