"At any particular moment in a man's life, he can say that everything he has done and not done, that has been done and not been done to him, has brought him to that moment. If he's being installed as Chieftain or receiving a Nobel Prize, that's a fulfilling notion. But if he's in a sleeping bag at ten thousand feet in a snowstorm, parked in the middle of a highway and waiting to freeze to death, the idea can make him feel calamitously stupid."

“NPR interview with William Least Heat-Moon by Tom Ashbrook, On Point”

“Booknotes interview with Least Heat-Moon on River-Horse: A Voyage Across America”

“Real Audio interviews with William Least Heat-Moon by Don Swaim”

“What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of? Maybe it's like the force in spores lying quietly under asphalt until the day they push a soft, bulbous mushroom head right through the pavement. There's nothing you can do to stop it.”

“In a land of quince jelly, apple butter, apricot jam, blueberry preserves, pear conserves, and lemon marmalade, you always get grape jelly.”

“Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he's going or understand what he sees?”