He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers.

Roland could not understand why anyone would want cocaine or any other illegal drug, for that matter, in a world where such a powerful one as sugar was so plentiful and cheap.

Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent.

It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed -- not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams. Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills. In the end even war ran up the white flag. Or so he hoped. He hoped that in the end even war surrendered.

God pisses down the back of your neck every day but only drowns you once.

Once again there was the desert, and that only.

There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.