The saddle is a place for dreaming when there's hours of trail ahead.

Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.

Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.

Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years.

Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves.

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.

It is better to have no emotion when it is work. Do what needs to be done, and do it coolly.