Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good -- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music.

Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.

Within that frame he went a long way and burned a deep scar.

The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads.

For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

I remember as a child reading or hearing the words 'The Great Divide' and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China.