“True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow”

“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.”

“We have in America "The Big Two-Hearted River" tradition: taking your wounds to the wilderness for a cure, a conversation, a rest, whatever. And as is in the Hemingway story, if your wounds aren't too bad, it works. But this isn't Michigan (or Faulkner's Big Woods in Mississippi for that matter). This is Alaska.”

“What I thought was an endturned out to be a middle.What I thought was a brick wallturned out to be a tunnel.What I thought was an injusticeturned out to be a color of the sky.”

“Outside the youth center, between the liquor storeand the police station,a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;overflowing with blossomfoam,like a sudsy mug of beer;like a bride ripping off her clothes,dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.It’s been doing that all week:making beauty,and throwing it away,and making more.”

“So the avenues we walk down,full of bodies wearing faces,are full of hidden talent:enough to make pianos moan,sidewalks split,streetlights deliriously flicker.”

“Often we ask ourselvesto make absolute senseout of what just happens,and in this way, what we are practicingis suffering,which everybody practices,but strangely few of usgrow graceful in.”