I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.

Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.

There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.

Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.

This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me.

Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.