278 Quotes by Wallace Stegner

No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments. Fictions serve as well as facts.

Expose a child to a particular environment at this susceptible time and he will perceive in the shapes of that environment until he dies.

It is the abiding concern of thinking people to preserve what keeps men human-to save our contact with nature of which we are a part.

You'll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do. If you're very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide.

Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?

It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.

The brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks.

American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging.

Are you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer.