“Conditions are seldom ideal, and if one waits long enough for ideal conditions one is just making excuses.”

Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing – to be sharp, yet open.

I already had a good start. As a teenager in rural Maine, after we came to America, I had learned hunting, fishing, and trapping in the wilderness.

My Maine mentors had long ago taught me to make home brew. I owned a rifle, and I’d already built a log cabin. The rest should be easy. I thought I’d give it a shot.

Trying to live in harmony with the dictates of nature is probably as inspirational as living in harmony with the Koran or the Bible. Perhaps it is also a timely undertaking.

Barry L. Jacobs and colleagues from the neuroscience program at Princeton University showed that when mice ran every day on an exercise wheel, they developed more brain cells and they learned faster than sedentary controls. I believe in mice.

Running is perhaps the most fundamental of all sports, and it is economically the least costly to perform.

The essential thing is to run period! And to do it for a long time and consistently and then everything will take care of itself.

I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced.

For those that endure until spring, existence is reduced to its elegant essentials.

We are social animals. We like to feel a part of something of beauty and power that transcends our insignificance. It can be a religion, a political party, a ball club. Why not also Nature? I feel a strong identity with the world of living things.

As a consequence, it is the most democratic and most competitive of all sports because individual merit can prevail despite economic equality. It is a sport for everyone, the whole world over.

Edward Abbey said you must brew your own beer; kick in you Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.

The very idea of “managing” a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing.

Spraying to kill trees and and raspberry bushes after a clear-cut merely looks unaesthetic for a short time, but tree plantations are deliberate ecodeath.

I would sooner want a strong partnership with the United States – even with (US President George W.) Bush, who I think is the worst president in a long, long time. I would sooner want a friendship with Bush than with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.

If the conflict is about the size of Israel, then long and difficult negotiations can eventually resolve the problem. But if the conflict is about the existence of Israel, then serious negotiation is impossible.

They are the most painful tears in the world … the tears of the aged … for they come from dried beds where the emotions have long burned low.

Don’t judge yourself by others’ standards…have your own. And don’t get caught up into the trap of changing yourself to fit the world.

As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

The essential thing is to run period! And to do it for a long time and consistently and then everything will take care of itself.

Always make sure you have your rent. At the end of the month, if you have to eat Ramen for a week because you won’t have your rent money.

Just do it but make sure your rent is all there so you’re not stressing about that. As long as you have your rent at least you have somewhere to live.