I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.

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.

People don't resist change. They resist being changed.

Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.

I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.

I love French auto design of the early '50s, '60s, early '70s of Citorens, Renaults, and Peugeots. They're so unique.

After each creative act one has to be sustained by one's strength of character, by a moral sense, by I don't know what, lest one tumble.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Poetry springs from something deeper; it's beyond intelligence.

Envy is but the smoke of low estate, Ascending still against the fortunate.

When I'm asked who my audience is, I say someone with an open mind, which is not a vacant one and sometimes a liberal mind is not the same thing as an open one.