He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.

Self-parody is the first portent of age.

Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.

The reason men are so awful is because some woman has spoiled them.

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.

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

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