The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter.

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

I am always jumping into the sausage grinder and deciding, even before I’m half ground, that I don’t want to be a sausage after all.

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.