He never fell, never slipped back, never flew.

Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.

One day we'll sit and you'll lay it out on the table, neat like a solitaire deck, but now - why, you can't find all the cards.

But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and more precious.

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.

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

We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.