There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known.

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

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.