“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think.”

All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock.

We now use the word ‘nature’ very much as our fathers used the word ‘God.’

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness.

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.

The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.

To be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.

All the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.

You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

In winter, the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.

We talk of communing with Nature, but ’tis with ourselves we commune.

Like tens of thousands of others, I have been a spectator of, rather than a participator in, the activities – political, commercial, sociological, scientific – of the times in which I have lived.

I believe that we are here to contribute love to the planet – each of us in our own way

You can get stale writing with each other for a while.

Each new deal is another opportunity.

God is in everyone and everything. When we save each other or guide each other or just love each other.

That thorny path, those stormy skies, have drawn our spirits nearer; and rendered us, by sorrow’s ties, each to the other dearer.

Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other’s faces.

Each time a Palestinian or an Israeli dies, it is terrible. But they have the right to have a funeral, to be buried, to have a place in the memory of the survivors. And then you have these other places – Darfur, Rwanda.

I accept all interpretations of my films. The only reality is before the camera. Each film I make is kind of a return to poetry for me, or at least an attempt to create a poem.