In rural parts of China, it's like stepping back into the era of my grandfather or great-grandfather - not much has changed.
Coming from a country that's rapidly changing, I love the idea of a place like South Dakota where nothing has really changed.
Every single day the world seems like it is on the brink of falling apart. But then I look outside my window, and things look about the same as they did a week ago. It's almost a form of cognitive dissonance.
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet.
We've more important studies than your fantasies and fears You know that rock's been perched up there for a hundred thousand years.
Carney is like a graveyard where everyone already owns their plots and has built houses on top of them.
Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve.
I like terra firma; the more firma, the less terra.
No matter when you had been to this spot before, a thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago, or if you came back to it a million years from now, you would see some different things each time, but the scene would be generally the same.
I've been to Washington many times over the years for stories, and it always seems remarkably the same. More the same than the rest of the country. It's almost like they dress the same as they did 20 years ago. The same old guys are sitting outside the same dirty, dingy secret offices in the Capitol that you're not allowed to go in.
The world remains ever the same.
