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.
We are easily comforted for the misfortunes of our friends, when those misfortunes give us an occasion of expressing our affection and solicitude.
There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success.
I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.
She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.
I was told so many times when I was a kid, 'I can't be friends with you, you're too intense, you're too sad all the time.' I really thought that when I made the first album that everyone would understand me, all the people who weren't my friends would become my friends.
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