Gary Snyder Quotes

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

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.

When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.

Range after range of mountains. Year after year after year. I am still in love.

Nature is orderly. That which appears to be chaotic in nature is only a more complex kind of order.

Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.

I hold the most archaic values on earth ... the fertility of the soul, the magic of the animals, the power-vision in solitude.... the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.

The size of the place that one becomes a member of is limited only by the size of one's heart.