“It just bothered me that you might think I'm somethin special. I aint.”

“I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.”

“He’s just a good all-around horse. He aint a finished horse but I think he’ll make a cow horse. I’m pleased to hear it. Of course your preference is for one that’ll bow up like a bandsaw and run head first into the barn wall.John Grady smiled. Horse of my dreams, he said. It aint exactly like that.How is it then?I don’t know. I think it’s just somethin you like. Or don’t like. You can add up all of a horse’s good points on a sheet of paper and it still wont tell you whether you’ll like the horse or not.What about if you add up all his bad ones?I don’t know. I’d say you’d probably done made up your mind at that point.You think there’s horses so spoiled you cant do nothin with em?Yes I do. But probably not as many as you might think.Maybe not. You think a horse can understand what a man says?You mean like words?I don’t know. Like can he understand what he says.John Grady looked out the window. Water was beaded on the glass. Two bats were hunting in the barnlight. No, he said. I think he can understand what you mean.”

“When you’re a kid you have these notions about how things are goin to be, Billy said. You get a little older and you pull back some on that. I think you just wind up tryin to minimize the pain. Anyway this country aint the same. Nor anything in it. The war changed everthing. I dont think people even know it yet.”

“You ever get ill at ease? said Rawlins.About what?I dont know. About anything. Just ill at ease.Sometimes. If you're someplace you aint supposed to be I guess you'd be ill at ease. Should be anyways.Well suppose you were ill at ease and didnt know why. Would that mean that you might be someplace you wasnt supposed to be and didnt know it?”

“This place aint the same. It never will be. Maybe we've all got a little crazy. I guess if everbody went crazy together nobody would notice, what do you think?”

“The Good Book says that the meek shall inherit the earth and I expect that's probably the truth. I aint no freethinker, but I'll tell you what. I'm a long way from bein convinced that it's all that good a thing.”