“This is the final book about Brian”

“I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.”

“I'm a teller of stories. I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I say what the hunt was like. It's not erudite; it's not intellectual. I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker, and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.”

“I have a pickup truck. And I prefer to be with dogs or on my sailboat than in a car - actually, more than any other place on Earth.”

“I think that what computers have done is just disastrous to the language.”

“I tried to contain myself... but I escaped!”

“She was brilliant and joyous and she believed- probably correctly- that libraries contain the answers to all things, to everything, and that if you can't find the information you seek in the library, then such information probably doesn't exist in this or any parallel universe now or ever to be known. She was thoughtful and kind and she always believed the best of everybody. She was, above all else, a master librarian and she knew where to find any book on any subject in the shortest possible time. And she was wonderfully unhinged.”

“The book is that is the good one is Woodsong and we are trying to finish it.”

“Patience, he thought. So much of this was patience - waiting, and thinking and doing things right. So much of all this, so much of all living was patience and thinking.”

“And the last thought he had that morning as he closed his eyes was: I hope the tornado hit the moose.”

“I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me. The sea.”