Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is.

Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella.

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.

You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?

When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.

You're buying years of work, toil in the sun; you're buying a sorrow that can't talk.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.