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Ralph Waldo Emerson – Nature
“In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”
Maxine Hong Kingston – The Woman Warrior
“‘If you should decide during your old age that you would like to live another five hundred years, come here and drink ten pounds of this sap,’ they told me. ‘But don’t do it now. You’re too young to decide to live forever’.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Diamond as big as the Ritz
” ‘I’ve never noticed the stars before. I always thought of them as great, big diamonds that belonged to someone. Now they frighten me. They make me feel that it was all a dream, all my youth.’ ‘It was a dream,’ said John quietly. ‘Everybody’s childhood is a dream, a form of chemical madness’.”
Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle
“Man blinked, ‘What is the purpose of all this?’ he asked politely. ‘Everything must have a purpose?’ asked God. ‘Certainly,’ said man. ‘Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,’ said God. And he went away.”
Fred Setterberg – The Roads Taken
“America is the world’s most blaring, off-key, hand-clapping choir. You can hear the choir every day on Dumaine Street in New Orleans, or in San Francisco’s Mission District, or on the south side of Chicago- you can even hear its echo in Boise, Missoula, and Fargo, North Dakota. TURN UP THE MUSIC!”
Jon Krakauer – Into the Wild
” ‘Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun’.” (Quoting Christopher McCandless)
David Almond – Kit’s Wilderness
“The snow on the wilderness had turned hard. Our footprints and our snowballs lay there like white fossils. Snowmen stood like ancient statues.”
Jack Kerouac – On the Road
“I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall, ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’ by Alan-Fournier, but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing.”
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