“If you break little promises, you'll break big ones.”

“You always pay too much. Particularly for promises. There aint no such thing as a bargain promise.”

“Anyway, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. I was too young for one war and too old for the next one. But I seen what come out of it. You can be patriotic and still believe that some things cost more than they’re worth. Ask them Gold Star mothers what they paid and what they got for it. You always pay too much. Particularly for promises. There aint no such thing as a bargain promise.”

“He'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air.”

“You never know when you'll be in need of them you've despised,”

“How do I know you're one of the good guys?You dont. You'll have to take a shot.Are you carrying the fire?Am I what?Carrying the fire.You're kind of weirded out, arent you?No.Just a little.Yeah.That's okay.So are you?What, carrying the fire?Yes.Yeah, We are.”

“In that long ago somewhere very near this place he'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air.”