“What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.”

“When I want to write something I just sit down (or stand up) and do it. Scribble, scribble, nothing could be easier. It helps, naturally, to have something to say.”

“Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others.”

“I've got a crooked elbow and I generally say my prayers with one leg on a brass rail.”

“So I write mainly for the fun of it, the hell of it, the duty of it. I enjoy writing and will probly be a scribbler on my dying day, sprawled on some stony trail halfway between two dry waterholes.”

“The world is big but it is comprehensible," says R. Buckminster Fuller. But it seems to me that the world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery comprehensible only in part. The very existence of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown - not a problem, but a mystery. We will never get to the bottom of it, never know the whole of even so small and trivial and useless and precious a place as Aravaipa. Therein lies our redemption.”

“Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.”