“It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living...”

“There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them a...”

“The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.”

“Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward wh...”

“You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. You are captivesand you have made a captive of the world itself. That's wha...”

“[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.”

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, ...”

“The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.”

“Running through the maze of life, you come across profound ambiguities and complexities. Yet the essence of living a meaningful life remains simple- following your heart and pursuing your life purp...”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”