“It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone.”

“We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.”

“You got no fuckin idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.”

“There was a month of fiery happiness. Then six kinked years of suffering.”

“and they shook hands, hit each other on theshoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them andnothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mileEnnis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand ayard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirlingnew snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad ashe ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.”

“You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country--indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky--provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut......Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that.”

“...all them things I don't know could get you killed if I come to know them”