you can't fit the same religion to every man any mo' than you can the same pair of breeches. The big man takes the big breeches an' the little man takes the small ones, an' it's jest the same with religion. It may be cut after one pattern, but it's might apt to get its shape from the wearer inside. Why, thar ain't any text so peaceable that it ain't drawn blood from somebody.

The truth is I've got the land on my back, an' it's drivin' me. Land is a hard driver.

Life is never what one dreams. It is seldom what one desires, but for the vital spirit and the eager mind, the future will always hold the search for buried treasure and the possibility of high adventure.

I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.

Cruelty, I truly believe, is the one and only sin.

The things I feared were not in the sky, but in the nature and in the touch of humanity. The cruelty of children . . . the blindness of the unpitiful - these were my terrors. But not the crash of thunder overhead, not the bolts of fire from the clouds.

If broken hearts could kill, the earth would be as dead as the moon.