If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit Awards.

If a piece of knotted string can unleash the wind, and if a drowned man can awaken, then I believe a broken man can heal.

...all them things I don't know could get you killed if I come to know them

If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it.

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.

If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.