Edward Hoagland quotes
Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.
City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.
In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.
Like a kick in the butt, the force of events wakes slumberous talents.
Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.
Men often compete with one another until the day they die; comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.
Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.
The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.
There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer.
True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.