51 Quotes by Rick Bass

I think the idea of holing up and hunkering down against the larger forces of the world has not lost its allure since Thoreau’s time. If anything that instinct, or impulse, continues to reside in almost all of us, sometimes activated or bestirred and other times dormant but always present.

The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world – to put on blinders and avoid seeing it – would for me seem like a form of madness. I’m also interested in the way landscape shapes individuals and populations, and from that, cultures.

His errors and failures have not traveled the same distance as his successes.

I don’t think I’m a natural novelist. Plot is definitely one of my weaker points. I’ve been working on it a long time, and it’s not getting much better.

We try and map boundaries, and to string fence – we try to set up a border between life and death, between man and nature, and complicity versus innocence. But the truth is, there is no complicity, there is no innocence; and there is no death, there is only life.

The thing about nature is that each species does what it’s best at. That’s why it’s all so locked together. I’m certain that at its center is some kind of peace or unity or harmony – the white light people speak of having when they come back from “the dead.” And what does our species do best? We construct artificial systems wherein we are mighty predators, or mighty thinkers, or sagacious, benevolent rulers of the universe – allies with God even.