Quotes by Gary Snyder

“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”

“Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.”

“Its about establishing a collaborative professional learning community,”

“It wont address every student every day, but we want to reach each one over the course of 180 days,”

“The first priority is just to get them registered,”

“Allen turned up at my little cabin, ... and we immediately began exchanging poems.”

“It gave a sense of the possibilities of an alternative culture. And it wasnt just poetry that moved people. It was the sense of a community, of people with a vision.”

“He could start for Arkansas right now.”

“Thats the part most of us can remember being part of homeroom,”

“(Resort) players are finding that bunker. I can tell; they dont rake the sand.”

In Western Civilization, our elders are books.

The other side of the sacred is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots.

Will be but corpses dressed in frocks, who cannot speak to birds or rocks.

The Government finally decidedTo wage the war all-out. Defeat is Un-American. And they took to the air,Their women beside themin bouffant hairdosputting nail-polish on thegunship cannon-buttons.And they never came downfor they found,the groundis Pro-Communist. And dirty.And the insects side with the Viet Cong.

Goal: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers, the presence of Pelican and Osprey and Gray Whale in our lives; salmon and trout in our streams; unmuddied language and good dreams.

In the 40,000 year time scale were all the same people. Were all equally primitive, give or take two or three thousand years here or a hundred years there.

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a fields forces [become] what we call very loosely the spirit of the place. To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.

I have a friend who feels sometimes that the world is hostile to human life--he says it chills us and kills us. But how could we be were it not for this planet that provided our very shape? Two conditions--gravity and a livable temperature range between freezing and boiling--have given us fluids and flesh. The trees we climb and the ground we walk on have given us five fingers and toes. The place (from the root plat, broad, spreading, flat) gave us far-seeing eyes, the streams and breezes gave us versatile tongues and whorly ears. The land gave us a stride, and the lake a dive. The amazement gave us our kind of mind. We should be thankful for that, and take natures stricter lessons with some grace.

If we are here for any good purpose at all (other than collating texts, running rivers, and learning the stars), I suppose it is to entertain the rest of nature. A gang of sexy primate clowns. All the little critters creep in close to listen when the human beings are in a good mood and willing to play some tunes.