“All right people, listen up! If you've got a family back home waiting for you or if you just want to save your own skin, turn around and walk away. Also, women! I have no intention of fighting any women!”

“You should fight like hell if you get attacked on the street, or in your home. The old thinking was, especially with women, submit, give in, maybe the guy will give you abreak and not kill you. Now, maybe you will get raped, butleast you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you didn'tjust lie down and take it. You don't know how many home-invasion scenes we walk in on where the people are sitting there all tied up and all dead. There'll be four, five people, a family, mayb...more "You should fight like hell if you get attacked on the street, or in your home. The old thinking was, especially with women, submit, give in, maybe the guy will give you abreak and not kill you. Now, maybe you will get raped, butleast you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you didn'tjust lie down and take it. You don't know how many home-invasion scenes we walk in on where the people are sitting there all tied up and all dead. There'll be four, five people, a family, maybe some guests: enough to put up a fight. And you know they let themselves get tied up. You just know the guys said, 'We just want to tie you up. We won't hurt you.' You'd think the people would realize — why do they want to tie us up if they don't want to hurt us? But they bought it. It always gives us a little chuckle.”

“If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)”

“Charley talking to Cookie ‘'You know those women in nursing homes that have to be restrained around the clock because they mix up everyones medication and steal all the bedpans?'' ‘’Yes'' I said wondering what I was walking into''That’s going to be you!''She was probably right, if I live that long”

“I believe that we are who we choose to be.Nobody is going to come and save you. You've got to save yourself.Nobody is going to give you anything. You've got to go out and fight for it.Nobody knows what you want except you, and nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it.So don't give up your dreams.”

“Sometimes there is no choice but to walk into your own house. Far away, you think, and you do not want to see. You come home and you say do not tell me. You say, I have hunted the elk all over the snowfields of the Selway, and I do not want to know what happened here. And then there is a morning you walk in and take a look in your own house, like any traveler.”