“When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes — disease and death and the rotting of flesh.”

“I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument— and that is to avoid it. Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.”

“We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.”

“When the juices of trees have no means of escape, they clot and rot in them, making the trees hollow and good for nothing.”

“I would take to be quite a fool any man who would make a book full of laws and statutes for an apple tree telling it how to bear apples and not thorns, when the tree is able by its own nature to do this better than the man with all his books can describe and demand.”

“When I was a kid we had a sandbox. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.”

“When Eve ate the apple her knowledge increased. But God liked dumb women so Paradise ceased. Gwen Goodnight. Her Work.”

“Our air up here is good for the disease — I mean good against the disease,… but it is also good for the disease.”

“This is a gray world. There is enough sorrow in it, even though we cease to scourge each other—the sorrow of floods, famines, fires, earthquakes, storms, diseases, and death. We should trust each other, and love each other, and sympathize with and help each other, and be patient and forgiving.”

“When they paint the image that I was this monster who picked up these alter boys along the street and swatted them like flies I said "this is ludicrous."”