How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I am absolutely alone. There are no other customers. The road is vacant, the interstate is out of sight and earshot. I have hazarded into a new corner of the world, an unknown spot, a Brigadoon. (6.4)
Even when Dillard goes on a road trip, she's alone—and when she stops at the gas station, it's deserted except for the attendant. There might have been times during the year when she was with people, but those aren't the stories she chooses to tell—they aren't what she's interested in.
Quote #2
What if I fell in a forest: would a tree hear? (6.41)
This is a play on the old question, "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there, does it make a sound?" (We know it would, because we know how sound waves work—human acknowledgment is unnecessary for nature to operate according to science.)
Quote #3
If you want to find a species wholly new to science and have your name inscribed Latinly in some secular version of an eternal rollbook, then your best bet is to come to the southern Appalachians, climb some obscure and snakey mountain where, as the saying goes, "the hand of man has never set foot," and start turning over rocks. (7.10)
This is another way man uses nature for his own purposes—specifically, his own glorification.