Wallace Stegner

I hope they have found enough pleasure along the way so that they don't want it ended.
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It should not be denied...that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west.
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The air is so crisp it gives me a brief, delusive sense of health and youth. Those I don't have but I have learned not to scorn the substitutes: quiet, plenty of time, and a job to spend it on.
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A muddy little stream, a village grown unfamiliar with time and trees. I turn around and retrace my way up Main Street and park and have a coke in the confectionery store. It is run by a Greek, as it used to be, but whether the same greek or another I would not know. He does not recognize me, nor I him. Only the smell of his place is familiar, surupy with old delights, as if the ghost of my first banana split had come close to brethe on me.
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Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness go.
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There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had it's home and happiness it's headquarters
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It is the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is choose which rules you want to live by, and it is persistent and aggravated imbecilitdy to pretend you can live without any.

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