I seen it over an' over—a guy talkin' to another guy and it don't make no difference if he don't hear or understand. The thing is, they're talkin', or they're settin' still not talkin'. It don't make no difference, no difference. [...] George can tell you screwy things, and it don't matter. It's just the talking. It's just bein' with another guy. That's all.

I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.

I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton woool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it's such a sweet trap.

The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant

it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.

Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.