“Daddy had a strict rule about firearms. Anything we killed we had to eat. No amount of barbecue sauce would make a hairy guy like you palatable.”

“I'd learned how to handle a gun before I was fully potty trained.”

“In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations.”

“We all claimed God as our God, but we had been serving lesser things.”

“A man approaching retirement called the retirement office to inquire about his pension. Afterward, he was asked if his wife worked. “She’s worked all her life making me happy”, he replied. “Yes sir, but has she earned money to receive her pension?” “When we got married we agreed on an arrangement”, he said. “I would earn the living, and she would make the living worthwhile”.“Make the living worthwhile”…have we forgotten the very essence of that? Have we forgotten to live for someone else, that doing so IS what makes a living worthwhile?”

“By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat.”

“We had been so close to missing each other, he and I. He had turned out to be the greatest gift of all.”