Mitchell Biggs

“People think they understand things because they become familiar with them. This is only superficial knowledge. It is the knowledge of the astronomer who knows the names of the stars, the botanist who knows the classification of the leaves and flowers, the artist who knows the aesthetics of green and red. This is not to know nature itself- the earth and sky, green and red. Astronomer, botanist, and artist have done no more than grasp impressions and interpret them, each within the vault of his own mind. The more involved they become with the activity of the intellect, the more they set themselves apart and the more difficult it becomes to live naturally.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

“Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. 'I'm glad I have lived to see this,' he said.

I have felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Farming is a poor way to make a living, at least around here, because you have to go into factory farming to make it pay. It is the best hobby there is—only 'hobby' is too little a word. The best way of life. Not just because you learn forty different trades, and not just because you follow the seasons, but because you get to spend your whole life producing a single work of art. That is, the farm itself.”
― Noel Perrin, Third Person Rural: Further Essays of a Sometime Farmer

“I loved the sense of being so close to the city, yet so far out on this magnificently eventful sea, with its wild creatures and mazy channels. I thought, if I lived in Seattle, I’d keep a boat of my own, and sail it to where the tide ran at sixteen knots at springs, and where there were whirlpools ten feet deep. I’d live on a sane frontier between nature and civilization, with one foot in the water, the other in a metropolis of restaurants and bookstores. I’d read and write in the mornings, and run away to sea in the afternoons.”
― Jonathan Raban, Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings