My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.

Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it's only when that thing arrives that they find out that they've been waiting rather than living.

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

I learned why 'out riding alone' is an oxymoron: An equestrian is never alone, is always sensing the other being, the mysterious but also understandable living being that is the horse.

Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.