“I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever.”

To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we ‘know’ that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.

The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.

Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. But they can’t be let off so easily, for they are all farming by proxy.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief…

The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes.

I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself… something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.

I’m a writer more than I am a talker.

We cannot comprehend what comprehends us.

When you are new at sheep-raising and your ewe has a lamb, your impulse is to stay there and help it nurse and see to it and all. After a while, you know that the best thing you can do is walk out of the barn.

A longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts.

I’ve had a good life, and was born to and among people I’ve admired and loved.

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

And to take good care of it, we have to know it. And to know it and to be willing to take care of it, we have to love it.

I really believe in the power of music.

If a man is tongue-tied, don’t laugh at him, but, rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with broken legs.

A society that feels life is the most precious thing [jars against] a society that prefers death over theft, over loss of pride, over inconvenience, and so much else.

For most Americans, my Chinese music feels like a novelty and it’s not what it is for me.

Dishonoring what we feel is an epidemic that has us self-medicating as a culture and trying to numb ourselves.

I feel that one of the hardest things in acting is the way you need to switch your emotions.

He has committed everything he’s had to it. If in fact he believes that every human life was sacred, I knew that if he had his conscious awakened

This might sound masochistic or narcissistic‚ I don’t know‚ but when I’m not playing the game‚ the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness‚ in a lot of ways‚ when I’m not playing.