"Through a shaft of sun moves a band of Magar women, scarlet-shawled; they wear heavy brass ornaments in the left nostril."
13

"Down mountain fields, a path of stones flows like mercury in the sunlight; even the huts have roofs of silver slates."
24

"How easy it feels to be superfluous on this expedition, in no haste and without gainful destination - gnaskor, or "going around places," as pilgrimages are described in Tibet."
27

"These simple and uneducated men comport themselves with the wise calm of monks, and their well-being is in no way separable from their religion."
34

"Most poets know about these pangs of loss, and here and there in my prose readings, strange passages would leap like unicorns out of the page."
43

"That year I was a new student of Zen, expecting nothing, and almost another year had passed before something said by an older student made me realize...