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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
FriendshipConnectionSupportCompanionshipUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a speech about the importance of true friendships at a gathering.
More from Wallace Stegner
All quotes →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.
Wallace StegnerRead
Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.
Wallace StegnerRead
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.
Wallace StegnerRead
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.
Wallace StegnerRead
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Wallace StegnerRead
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Where there are friends there is wealth.
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And then there are my friends, and they have their own lives. While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesize, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate. It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.
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Between friends there is no need of justice.
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A friend in power is a friend lost.
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We are wont to see friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands...Thus it is hard for us to understand the political relevance of friendship...But for the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse...The converse (in contrast to the intimate talk in which individuals speak about themselves), permeated though it may be by pleasure in the friend’s presence, is concerned with the common world.
Hannah ArendtRead