“Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.”

“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is tru...”

“I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literaturenot for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean ...”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," ...”

“If you push me far enough, all I really know is that he was a fine fisherman.""You know more than that," my father said. "He was beautiful.”

“If you claim to be a real friend then be real in your soul. If you claim to be fake then be an enemy instead.”

“I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.”

“You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.”

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for t...”

“You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore...”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying youre friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”