I decided that survival was not in the rivets and the metal, and not in the double-sealed doors and not in the marbles of Chinese checkers. It was in… - James Dickey

That’s all anybody has got. It depends on how strong your fantasy is, and whether you really — really — in your own mind, fit into your own fantasy, whether you measure up to what you’ve fantasized. I don’t know what yours is, but I’ll bet you don’t come up to it.

There was nothing in common, in the way he was lying, with any of the positions I had seen him in while he was alive, until I remembered the pose by the river in which I had most wanted to kill him. He now had that same relaxed, enjoying look of belonging anywhere he happened to be, and particularly in the woods.

I saw for a blazing moment
The great grassy world from both sides,
Man and beast in the round of their need.