Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.

If you want to keep a friend, never test him.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

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.

Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own history based on, but not limited by, facts.

You got a God. Don't make no difference if you don' know what he looks like.