Peter Matthiessen - Quodid

About

Picture of Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher, and onetime CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine The Paris Review, he is the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both nonfiction (The Snow Leopard, 1979, category Contemporary Thought) and fiction (Shadow Country, 2008). He was also a prominent environmental activist.

Quotes from Peter Matthiessen

Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day … we become seekers.

—Peter Matthiessen

ideas ego opinions abstractions

In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us.

—Peter Matthiessen

wisdom focus secret breath meditation teachers