Edward Hoagland

“Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?”

“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.”

“Like a kick in the butt, the force of events wakes slumberous talents.”

“What did you give your kids, besides a lottery of genes? A stance--that mix of bluff and confidence, backbone and wussiness that passes for personality or character. One talks less about ethics after third grade. Don't steal candy or hit other children, if they hadn't learned the costs of violence on their own.”

“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 sexual license prevalent among {the} Sixties generation was deplorable, but no more so than predatory Capitalism, with cruel slums alongsideabsurd affluence: affluence which paid for...depictions of the Holy Family as a form of expiation. Love was the basis for what he believed. Promiscuity certainly violated that polestar, yet caring for others, even in "fooling around"--which was not to justify it--topped dog-eat-dog Capitalism.”

“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.”

“Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.”

“When I was 18 I worked with the Ringling Brothers circus, taking care of menagerie animals. I used to rather deliberately risk my life with the big cats.”

“Once I climbed into a mountain lion's cage and she bounded at me and put her paw on my face, but she kept her claws withdrawn.”

“Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same.”

“She--the unnamed lady--simply drew his hands to the Paleolithic places men always have grown tumid from feeling, like the outward cradle of the hips within which a fetus will reside and her breasts that will nourish it, once born.”

“There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly I couldn't talk at all.”

“A writer's work is to witness things.”

“Don't be afraid of the dark." She tousled his hair tolerantly. "I've never known a man who wasn't scared of more things than I was.”

“Black bears, though, are not fearsome. I encountered one on the road to my house in Vermont, alone at night. I picked up two stones just in case, but I wasn't afraid of him. I felt a hunter's exhilaration and a brotherly feeling.”

“Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.”

“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.”

“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.”