Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.
We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase 'to live like men.
Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.
This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.
I always write with my .357 Magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.
But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.
One mile farther and I come to a second grave beside the road, nameless like the other, marked only with the dull blue-black stones of the badlands. I do not pause this time. The more often you stop the more difficult it is to continue. Stop too long and they cover you with rocks.
I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.
What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.
As for writing, that's a cruel hard business. Unless you're very lucky it'll break your heart.
Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.
[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.
Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can.
A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. Or so it is with me. Thus my writing life consists of spells of languor alternating with fits and spasms of mad typing. At all times, though, I keep a journal, a record book, and most everything begins in the form of notes scribbled down on the pages of that journal.
Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
