That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Wallace StegnerRead
It is somethingit can be everything-to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.
Interpretation
Finding a true friend allows you to rise above the chaos of life together.
In this quote, Wallace Stegner highlights the profound connection of friendship, suggesting that having a companion who understands and supports you can elevate your experiences above the noise and turmoil of everyday life. The metaphor of sitting among the rafters implies a sense of tranquility and shared understanding, while the activities below symbolize the distractions and conflicts of the world.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a speech about the importance of true friendships at a gathering.
That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.
Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.
I was shaped by the west and have lived most of my life in it, and nothing would gratify me more than to see it in all its subregions and subcultures both prosperous and environmentally healthy, with a civilization to match its scenery.
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness; and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.
There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.
There is magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart, and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart.
You shone like a star. The funniest, wisest writer & the finest friend
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