Certainly on the vast windy plain, there was plenty of nothing to be looked at.

True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriend - and he accepts it

No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.

Working- and Middle-class families sat down at the dinner table every night - the shared meal was the touchstone of good manners. Indeed, that dinner table was the one time when we were all together, every day: parents, grandparents, children, siblings. Rudeness between siblings, or a failure to observe the etiquette of passing dishes to one another, accompanied by "please" and "thank you," was the training ground of behavior, the place where manners began.

Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn't remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation. "I hate a man that talks rude," he said. "I won't tolerate it.

I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't much of a recommendation for it.

A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.