278 Quotes by Wallace Stegner

A wandering dog of a night wind came in off the sagebrush mesa carrying a bar of band music, and laid it on her doorstep like a bone.

You hear what the dean said about Jesus Christ? ‘Sure He’s a good teacher, but what’s He published?

Nevertheless, no fictions.

There is something about all beards that is like the gesture of thumbing the nose. Thank you very much. Up yours.

Imprisoned in reiterative seasons, vacillating between hope and disappointment, they were kept from being the vigorous doers that their nature and their culture instructed them to be.

Maybe we were the Diggers of literature.

Ambition is a path, not a destination, and it is essentially the same path for everybody. No matter what the goal is, the path leads through Pilgrim’s Progress regions of motivation, hard work, persistence, stubbornness, and resilience under disappointment. Unconsidered, merely indulged, ambition becomes a vice; it can turn a man into a machine that knows nothing but how to run. Considered, it can be something else – pathway to the stars, maybe.

Westerners live outdoors more than people elsewhere because outdoors is mainly what they’ve got.