“So what is wild? What is wilderness? What are dreams but an internal wilderness and what is desire but a wildness of the soul?”

“When every inch of the world is known, sleep may be the only wilderness that we have left.”

“...which causes me to wonder, my own purpose on so many days as h umbel as the spider's, what is beautiful that I make? What is elegant? What feeds the world?”

“They moved in dance steps too intricate for the noninitiated eye to imitate or understand. Clearly they were of one soul. Handsome, rangy, wildly various, they were bound in total loyalty, not by oath, but by the simple, unquestioning belongingness of part of one organism.”

“Old love, middle love, the kind of love that knows itself and knows that nothing lasts, is a desperate shared wildness.”

“Coming down off the trail, I am lost in my own thoughts and unprepared when a bear chugs across the path just before it gives out on the gravel road. I am so distracted that I keep walking towards the bear. I only stop when it rears, stands on hind legs, and stares at me, sensitive nose pressed into the air, weak eyes searching. I have never been this close to a wild bear before, but I am not frightened. There is no menace in its stance; it is not even curious. The bear seems to know who or what I am. The bear is not impressed. ”

“What is this life but the sound of an appalling love.”