Peter Matthiessen

Alec Wilkinson is a spare, clear, and lucid writer who works in stylistic simplicity with material that is not simple at all.

— Peter Matthiessen

Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their…

— Peter Matthiessen

I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail.

— Peter Matthiessen

The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable…

— Peter Matthiessen

“...experience was static in the valley; it was older than time itself, for time was a thing of but two generations, dated…

— Peter Matthiessen

“The central feature of the practice of meditation and hard work known as Zen is that, as Matthiessen says, it “has no…

— Peter Matthiessen

Be light, light, light - full of light!

— Peter Matthiessen

For some time I watch the coming of the night? Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western…

— Peter Matthiessen

“Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet. It can be elegant and very beautiful but it can never be sculpture.…

— Peter Matthiessen

Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the…

— Peter Matthiessen

“In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” “I was there!”-surely…

— Peter Matthiessen

I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the…

— Peter Matthiessen

I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made,…

— Peter Matthiessen

“A far cicada rings high and clear over the river’s heavy wash. Morning glory, a lone dandelion, cassia, orchids. So far from…

— Peter Matthiessen

I ... had what Kierkegaard called 'the sickness of infinitude,' wandering from one path to another with no real recognition that I…

— Peter Matthiessen

“Though a few older men cut fingers in time of grief, it is usually the smallest girls who are selected for this…

— Peter Matthiessen

“In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for nearly an hour in his sandbox in the…

— Peter Matthiessen

Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when instinct functions?…

— Peter Matthiessen

“THey were jeered and admired by both sides and were not shot at, for display and panoply were part of war, which…

— Peter Matthiessen

Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake. We tend to daydream all the time, speculating about…

— Peter Matthiessen

“Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks,…

— Peter Matthiessen

“There is a difference between right and wrong, always was and always will be, but each man's wrong and each man's right…

— Peter Matthiessen

“I walk lighter, stumble less, with more spring in leg and lung, keeping my center of gravity deep in the belly, and…

— Peter Matthiessen

“In the jungle, during one night in each month, the moths did not come to the lanterns; through the black reaches of…

— Peter Matthiessen

“Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing - if this must…

— Peter Matthiessen