“I EXPECT MEASURABLE PROGRESS IN A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF TIME.”

“There were no milestones in the Copper Country. Often a traveler could only measure the progress of a journey by the time it took to get from each spoiled or broken thing to the next: a half-day’s walk from a dry well to the muzzle of a cannon poking out of a sand-slope, two hours to reach the skeletons of a man and a mule. The land was losing its battle with time. Ancient and exhausted, it visited decrepitude on everything within its bounds, as though out of spleen.”

“So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty.”

“That’s called Love, Jared. It never dies. It merely bleeds out to some insane measure of unconsciousness. You will never stop loving any of these people, but you do have to move on”

“Life expects us to make a reasonable amount of progress in a reasonable amount of time. That's why they make those second grade chairs so small.”

“Well, the cat is flourishing and gets more spoiled and more beautiful every day. His whiskers measure, from tip to tip, including his mouth and nose, of course, ten inches, pure white whale bone.”

“A hanging, though, was something different. I got to thinking. We hadn’t never been to nothing just to have a good time. A hanging was special and we was all getting to go.”