Whatever landscape a child is exposed to early on, that will be the sort of gauze through which he or she will see all the world afterwards. Wallace Stegner More Quotes by Wallace Stegner More Quotes From Wallace Stegner After a day and a half or so the traveler will realize that crossing the continent by Interstate he gets to know the country about as well as a cable messenger knows the sea bottom. Wallace Stegner half sea country Water is the true wealth in a dry land. Wallace Stegner dry land water If you're going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get. Wallace Stegner old-you wells might I may not know who I am, but I know where I am from. Wallace Stegner who-i-am knows may There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance, said the Ellen Ward of my dream, that woman I hate and fear. I am sure she meant some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning together from the vertical which produces the false arch. Wallace Stegner hopeful brain two We are the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy. Wallace Stegner effort nature might It is somethingit can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below. Wallace Stegner fighting drinking bird There is a sense in which we are all each other's consequences Wallace Stegner consequence scene beautiful Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it. Wallace Stegner skills practice writing Thanks to the growing strength of environmental organizations, there will always be some back country to provide us with a touch of wonder and a breath of fresh air. Wallace Stegner land air country We write to make sense of it all. Wallace Stegner make-sense writing A teacher enlarges people in all sorts of ways besides just his subject matter. Wallace Stegner teaching teacher people We do not write what we know; we write what we want to find out. Wallace Stegner knows want writing it is an easy mistake to think that non-talkers are non-feelers. Wallace Stegner easy mistake thinking There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. Wallace Stegner We were going to leave a mark on the world but instead the world left marks on us. Wallace Stegner left mark world Values, both those that we approve and those that we don't, have roots as deep as creosote rings, and live as long and grow as slowly Wallace Stegner grows roots long How much wilderness do the wilderness-lovers want? ask those who would mine and dig and cut and dam in such sanctuary spots as these. The answer is easy: Enough so that there will be in the years ahead a little relief, a little quiet, a little relaxation, for any of our increasing millions who need and want it. Wallace Stegner cutting relaxation years If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me. It has the forms and lights and colors that I respond to in nature and in art. If there is a western speech, I speak it; if there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it; if there is a western culture in the small-c , anthropological sense, I have not escaped it. It has to have shaped me. I may even have contributed to it in minor ways, for culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone. Wallace Stegner character art thinking History is not the proper midden for digging up novelties. Perhaps that is one reason why a nation bent on novelty ignores it. Wallace Stegner digging novelty reason-why
