You can scare off a lot of cowboys just by looking mean, I guess.

I once owned a collection of 77 novels that won the Pulitzer. The only good novel of the bunch was The Grapes of Wrath.

Death and worse happened on the plains.

Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime.

The older the violin, the sweeter the music.

I make my share of mistakes, but one I never make is to underestimate the power of things. People imbued from childhood with the myth of the primacy of feeling seldom like to admit they really want things as much as they might want love, but my career has convinced me that plenty of them do. And some want things a lot worse than they want love.

-she remembered them kindly, for there was a sweetness in boys that didn't last long, once they became men.