“I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?”

“I like to be perfectly open and sincere, and yet it is impossible to be sincere to all of one's self at once, so for the deepest understanding one must seek those with whom one can be most truly one's self and never be blind to the ineffable drollery of it all.”

“As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think. I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me? It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty.... Even from your scant description, I know that I could not bear the routine and humdrum of the life that you are forced to lead. I don't think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax.”

“I was sorry, though, that our intimacy, like many things that are and will be, had to die with a dying fall. I do not greatly mind endings, for my life is made up of them, but sometimes they come too soon or too late, and sometimes they leave feeling of regret as of an old mistake or an indirect futility.”

“...while I am alive, I intend to live.”

“I have seen almost more beauty than I can bear.”

“As to this half-baked pother about my always feeling inferior in the presence of college graduates, that fear is groundless too. I am not nonplussed in the presence of anybody, and I am seldom at a loss with anyone I am interested in.”