If a writer stops observing he is finished. But he does not have to observe consciously nor think how it will be useful. Perhaps that would be true at the beginning. But later everything he sees goes into the great reserve of things he knows or has seen.

A man does not exist until he is drunk.

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.

'Safety', the wife of Pablo said. 'There is no such thing as safety. There are so many seeking safety here now that they make a great danger. In seeking safety now you lose all.'

When I saw my wife again standing by the tracks as the train came in by the piled logs at the station, I wished I had died before I had ever loved anyone but her.

Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing, or very little, the shock can kill a man.

If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.