He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he'd like to escape from living folks. But it's the dead folks that do him the damage. It's the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from.

Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.

I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.