Our old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a place where decent people could escape the wreckage of failed lives and start over. Come along, the dream whispers, and you can have another chance. We still listen to promises in the wind. This time, we think, we’ll get it right.

One of finest evocations of life in Western America in recent memory... Powerful and profoundly moving.

I had discovered a terrible vulnerability I myself which I think of not as cowardliness but as an ability to imagine too much.

In a story, nothing is real until it is acted upon.

I want to think I deserve what I get. I don't want to consider how vastly I am overly rewarded. I don't want to consider the injustices around me. I don't want any encounters with the disenfranchised. I want to say it's not my fault. But it is, it's yours and mine, and ours. We'd better figure out ways to spread some equity around if we want to go on living in a society that is at least semi-functional. It's a fundamental responsibility, to ourselves.

Don't worry about meaning. If a story's any good, it can't help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means.

They knew bullshit, and they knew about the ruling class; dying for a ruling class cause was almost always bullshit.