Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

A fallow field is a sin.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.

We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields?

One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, "Beware. You will never get out of this world alive."

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.