... people are always turning out to be tougher than I think they are.

If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.

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

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

WHEN AUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over.

Listening to women ain't the fashion in this part of the country.

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.