Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.

If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.

A writer's brain is like a magician's hat. If you're going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

Long ago I learned nothing gets done by just wishing it. You have to do it.

Carryin' a gun is a chancy thing. Sooner or later a man is put in a position to use it. And a body has to figure that if somebody packs iron he plans to use it when the time comes; and if he draws it out, he plans to shoot.

The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me, and nothing before me but hope.