He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.

If you can't fix it, you have to stand it.

Wonderful ... I was up all night reading it, laughing and crying out in horror.

It's easier to die if others around you are dying.

Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.

What we fear we often rage against.

And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.