"Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space."

"Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew.

"Without cultural sanction, most or all our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance."

"But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means."

"Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!"

"He had a Puritan conscience and an Episcopalian sense of sin. The first pricked at him persistently, the second was excused through public piety."

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains..."

"For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!"

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment."