Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner
Wallace Earle Stegnerwas an American novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and historian, often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth18 February 1909
CountryUnited States of America
Wallace Stegner quotes about
ideas national-parks democratic
National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.
optimistic home quality
One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.
inspirational motivation heart
Be proud of every scar on your heart, each one holds a lifetime’s worth of lessons.
good-life ambition support
It is love and friendship, the sanctity and celebration of our relationships, that not only support a good life, but create one. Through friendships, we spark and inspire one another's ambitions.
might old-you wells
If you're going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get.
divorce home done
I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.
notebook morning lying
You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.
giving green littles
Every green natural place we save saves a fragment of our sanity and gives us a little more hope that we have a future.
independent eye trying
To try to save for everyone, for the hostile and independent as well as the committed, some of the health that flows down across the green ridges from the skyline, and some of the beauty and spirit that are still available to any resident of the valley who has a moment and the wit to lift up his eyes unto the hills.
broken-heart encouragement inspirational-life
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
essentials individualism belonging
American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging.
west adaptation process
The Westerner is less a person than a continuing adaptation. The West is less a place than a process.
teacher teaching people
A teacher enlarges people in all sorts of ways besides just his subject matter.
land water dry
Water is the true wealth in a dry land.