I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
In the clearness of this Himalayan air, mountains draw near, and in such splendor, tears come quietly to my eyes and cool on my sunburned cheeks. this is not mere soft-mindedness, nor am I all that silly with the altitude.… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all. — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“...experience was static in the valley; it was older than time itself, for time was a thing of but two generations, dated by moons… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“The central feature of the practice of meditation and hard work known as Zen is that, as Matthiessen says, it “has no patience with… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
For some time I watch the coming of the night? Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western world by… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet. It can be elegant and very beautiful but it can never be sculpture. Captive to… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
“In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” “I was there!”-surely that is… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak… — Peter Matthiessen Copy Share Image
