Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique.

I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue.

I will never lie again.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as when he was set on staying still, like it aint the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping. And like he would be kind of proud of whatever come up to make the moving or the setting still look hard. He set there on the wagon hunched up, blinking, listening to us tell about how quick the bridge went and how high the water was, and I be durn if he didn't act like he was proud of it, like he had made the river rise himself.