The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.

Through my college years, topping that ridge had always given me a great sense of being home, but time had diminished the emotion and I had begun to suspect that home was less a place than an empty page.

Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.

I suppose you set up reading the Good Book all night-spoken by Woodrow Call

Americans' lack of passion for history is well known. History may not quite be bunk, as Henry Ford suggested, but there's no denying that, as a people, we sustain a passionate concentration on the present and the future.

The only bookstore I had was the paperback rack at the drugstore.

They say money kinda melts when you take it across a border.