John McPhee Quotes

If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

With their four-dimensional minds, and in their interdisciplinary ultra verbal way, geologists can wiggle out of almost anything.

Rocks are records of events that took place at the time they formed. They are books. They have a different vocabulary, a different alphabet, but you learn how to read them.

In making war with nature, there was risk of loss in winning.

The doctor listens in with a stethoscope and hears sounds of a warpath Indian drum.

Taking things from one source is plagiarism; taking things from several sources is research.

Writing is a suspension of life in order to re-create life

I can't stand a sentence until it sounds right.

Almost all Americans would recognize Anchorage, because Anchorage is that part of any city where the city has burst its seams and extruded Colonel Sanders.

I used to sit in class and listen to the terms come floating down the room like paper airplanes.

Catch and release fishing may be cruelty masquerading as political correctness

The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone.

Nonfiction-wha t the hell, that just says, this is nongrapefruit we're having this morning.

He liked to go from A to B without inventing letters between.

He (Dave Brower) is an emotionalist in an age of dangerous reason.

Behind every tennis player there is another tennis player.

Only once in the historical record has a jump on the San Andreas exceeded the jump of 1906. In 1857, near Tejon Pass outside Los Angeles, the two sides shifted thirty feet.

He said, “Americans look upon water as an inexhaustible resource. It’s not, if you’re mining it. Arizona is mining groundwater.

going to have an industrial society you must have places that will look terrible. Other places you set aside—to say, ‘This is the way it was.’

If you have to ask that question, you wouldn't understand the answer.