It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.[...]It's slow. It rots out your guts.

A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.

Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans

Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it.

With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.

Only mediocrity escapes criticism.