And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "Use it well, use it wisely.

It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.

The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.

It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.

...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

There's more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty.

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