“ This bold energetic man of rare intelligence and enterprise must also be understood as a man undone by his own deep flaws. He was known to drink to grievous excess, for example, which often turned him… Peter Matthiessen
“ When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we… Peter Matthiessen
“ Watson loved them sour kind of jokes, which I enjoyed myself. I mean, ain’t life some kind of a sour joke? Might’s well laugh, that’s the way him and me seen it, whether nice folks seen the joke or no… Peter Matthiessen
“ You mean... Billy exclaimed at last, you mean... – his voice rose high and clear – you mean... – and he jumped to his feet, and standing there under the giant trees, pointed at himself, a small outrag… Peter Matthiessen
“ Before my eyes daily as we sailed way down upon the Suwannee River were visions of spring furrows at Clouds Creek, the warmed earth opened up behind the plow; of wildflowered meadows, cool and verdant… Peter Matthiessen
“ O, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so cha… Peter Matthiessen
“ Man wants the truth about Ed Watson, Daniels jeered. Where you aim to find it? Smallwoods’ll tell you their truth, Hardens’ll tell you theirs. Fat-ass guard out there, he’ll tell you his and I’ll give… Peter Matthiessen
“ Just goes to show how life leaks away when you ain’t paying attention. One day you look up, look around, and the world is empty. Not empty exactly but something is wrong, there ain’t no color left to… Peter Matthiessen
“ Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet. It can never be a sculpture. It can be elegant and very beautiful, but it can never be sculpture. Captive to facts - or predetermined form - it can… Peter Matthiessen
“ The sun is roaring, it fills to bursting each crystal of snow. I flush with feeling, moved beyond my comprehension, and once again, the warm tears freeze upon my face. These rocks and mountains, all t… Peter Matthiessen
“ And it is a profound consolation, perhaps the only one, to this haunted animal that wastes most of a long and ghostly life wandering the future and the past on its hind legs, looking for meanings, onl… Peter Matthiessen
“ Webster said, ''Time them skeeters get done with that old man, his French blood will be all gone and he will speak American as good as we do. Peter Matthiessen
“ I sit in meditation…and soon all sounds, and all one sees and feels, take on imminence, an immanence, as if the Universe were coming to attention, a Universe of which one is the center, a Universe tha… Peter Matthiessen
“ In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”“I was there!”-surely that is the answer to God’s question. For no matter how the universe came into be… Peter Matthiessen
“ In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for nearly an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the cl… Peter Matthiessen
“ Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form…the cosmic radiation that is thought to come from the explosion of cre… Peter Matthiessen
“ The mystical perception (which is only “mystical” if reality is limited to what can be measured by the intellect and senses) is remarkably consistent in all ages and all places. All phenomena are proc… Peter Matthiessen
“ The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each even… Peter Matthiessen
“ Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it o… Peter Matthiessen
