“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

“Sometimes I dreamthat everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly,and I am here too, in front of it, hardly able to see for the flash and the brightness—and sometimes I am that madcap person clapping my hands and singing; and sometimes I am that quiet person down on my knees.”

“DogfishI wantedThe past to go away, I wantedTo leave it, like another country; I wantedMy life to close, and openLike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song Where it fallsDown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,Whoever I was, I wasAliveFor a little while.…mostly, I want to be kind.And nobody, of course, is kind,Or mean,For a simple reason.And nobody gets out of it, having to Swim through the fires to stay inThis world.”

“I had a dogwho loved flowers.Briskly she wentthrough the fields,yet pausedfor the honeysuckleor the rose,her dark headand her wet nosetouchingthe faceof every onewith its petalsof silkwith its fragrancerisinginto the airwhere the bees,their bodiesheavy with pollenhovered -and easilyshe adoredevery blossomnot in the seriouscareful waythat we choosethis blossom or that blossomthe way we praise or don't praise -the way we loveor don't love -but the waywe long to be -that happyin the heaven of earth -that wild, that loving.”

“SunriseWhat is the nameof the deep breath I would takeover and overfor all of us? Call it whatever you want, it ishappiness, it is another oneof the ways to enterfire.”

“GOING TO WALDENIt isn't very far as highways lie.I might be back by nightfall, having seenThe rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!Many have gone, and think me half a foolTo miss a day away in the cool country.Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,Going to Walden is not so easy a thingAs a green visit. It is the slow and difficultTrick of living, and finding it where you are.”

“Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to doWith your one wild and precious life?”