Angle of Repose

by Wallace Stegner

I could conceive students of mine confronting Mary Hallock Foote and thinking, “My God, fantastic, inhuman,” because they themselves were so imprisoned in the present that they had no notion of how various humanity and human customs can be.

It is one of the compensations of being a pioneer that one may see it wild and unbroken.

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.