The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.

What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenhearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise. (All the Pretty Horses)

Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.

you fix what you can fix and you let the rest go. If there ain't nothin to be done about it it aint even a problem. It's just a aggravation.

Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.