Wallace Stegner Quotes
It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into; harshly and beautifully colored, broken and worn until its bones are exposed, its great sky without a smudge of taint from Technocracy, and in hidden corners and pockets under its cliffs the sudden poetry of springs.

Quotes to Explore
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I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that. And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy.
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It was my mother's idea. Her feeling was that I didn't have the intelligence to pick a trade myself.
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I believe nobody is stronger than the state. So the state would be strong, and we have to work altogether to make the strength of the state.
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I hate competition.
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I really was about to pass out during my entire wedding. I just didn't know if I could marry anybody.
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I'm a Persian Jew, and we don't speak Hebrew.
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Winning a gold medal is not easy but I believed in myself, especially over the last four years.
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It is ingrained in all living creatures, first of all, to preserve their own safety, to guard against what is harmful, to strive for what is advantageous.
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Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.
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Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.
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I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.
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Some of my books sort of have a provocative take. Sometimes you find interesting things about characters that show they weren't necessarily the way people usually see them. It can make for lively conversations, but that's great. Spark a little controversy, get people to think about it. That's what it's all about.
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If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them.
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I do take this insane pleasure in world-building. I get the world in my head, but I have to make sure everyone else gets it.
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I could walk into anyone's home one time and draw a three-dimensional architectural plan of the inside of their home from memory, but I could not add up a column of numbers.
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I know what I'm having 'em put on my tombstone: 'I have nothing more to say'.
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How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?
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I know something quite sure. We'll never have peace with this Syrian regime. They'll never give us relief, and we'll never forget that.
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I do work-related stuff on airplanes. Then, when I'm in the hotel room or just vegging out, I read for pleasure.
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When it comes right down to it, no, we're not religious at all.
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Everything good, fine or great they do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them.
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I don't think our Beat Generation would even be known as that, had it not been for Ginsberg. You might say he put that whole concept together. Without it, we might have been known, but only as individuals. Separate, great writers, scattered across the landscape.
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Open up your heart and the sky is yours.
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It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into; harshly and beautifully colored, broken and worn until its bones are exposed, its great sky without a smudge of taint from Technocracy, and in hidden corners and pockets under its cliffs the sudden poetry of springs.