“If you don't run your own life, someone else will”

“If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.”

“You said five little words to someone--How can I help you?--and it was as if you'd mortgaged your soul out to them.”

“The path of my life is strewn with cow pats from the devil's own satanic herd!”

“When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.”

“Time was a thief, he stole your life away from you and the only way you could get it back was to outwit him and snatch it right back.”

“His submissive death was the surest proof that he wholly believed the faith he had lived. He had no regrets or misgivings. "One world at a time," he said to Channing, who was speculating on the hereafter. When someone else inquired whether he had made his peace with God, he answered, "We have never quarreled.”