There is pleasure in the pathless woods there is rapture in the lonely shore there is society where none intrudes by the deep sea and music in its roar I love not Man the less but Nature more.

I've just finished my 20th book this past year and I'm working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I'll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I'm an artist too.

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.

When I was a kid my mom used to run the vacuum cleaner and the noise would bother me so much that I would run into the woods to calm down. I feel like that vacuum cleaner has been on since I moved to New York City.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Come live with me and be my love And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys groves hills and fields Woods or steepy mountain yields.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived.

I sat staring staring staring - half lost learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect. So still were the big woods where I sat sound might not yet have been born.

I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention to keep them turning the pages to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse yes but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that.

We all have a hungry heart and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading walking around the woods in Ohio where I grew up.