Peter Matthiessen
At WNYC New York Public Radio for interview (9 June 2008)
Born: 22 May 1927, New York City
Biography from Wikipedia
Peter Matthiessen quotes:
Quotes found : 18 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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- Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard (1978) - Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined — how is it that this safe return brings such regret? permalink
Peter Matthiessen - I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow. Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself. I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows. If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me — S-A-A-O! — then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard (1978) - I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - I used to distinguish between my fiction and nonfiction in terms of superiority or inferiority. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - 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 who paid very dearly for those great fortunes. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next — sometimes you even make a little outline — but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new — and for me, a very invigorating — experience. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - It is related that Sakyamuni [the historical Buddha] once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had spent twenty years of his human existence learning to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard (1978) - Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing — if this must come — seems the most tragic of all. I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972) - Only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows, disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped, like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard (1978) - 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 of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - The concept of conservation is a far truer sign of civilization than that spoilation of a continent which we once confused with progress. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - Wildlife in America (1959) - There's an elegiac quality in watching [American wilderness] go, because it's our own myth, the American frontier, that's deteriorating before our eyes. I feel a deep sorrow that my kids will never get to see what I've seen, and their kids will see nothing; there's a deep sadness whenever I look at nature now. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - Wildlife in America (1959) - This world is painted on a wild dark metal. permalink
Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country (2008)
Quotes found : 18 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 2) 1 2 Next
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