“I'm glad I've been wrong enough to keep in practice. . . You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it. If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it's bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day--that way they ain't usually much worse than a dry shave.”

“I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't much of a recommendation for it.”

“You don't look strong enough to trouble nobody around here.... We grow our own troubles--it would be a novelty to have some we ain't already used to.”

“There was something different about her, Jake had to admit. She had a beautiful face, a beautiful body, but also a distance in her such as he had never met in a woman. Certain mountains were that way, like the Bighorns .The air around them was so clear you could ride toward them for days without seeming to get any closer. And yet, if you kept riding, you would get to the mountains.”

“You should be proud of her. She cracked the wall, and I never thought I'd live to see it cracked."What are you talking about?" I said. "What wall?"The one you built around you," Jeannie said. "Don't say it wasn't there. It was there. I tried to crack it but I didn't have the confidence, you know? What happened is, it cracked me, but that's okay, I'm working around my crack pretty well. But you were dying behind your wall, and you're lucky to have a daughter who has the guts to crack it. I hope she smashes it to fucking smithereens and you never have another peaceful day in your whole fucking life, Mr. Deck!”

“I make my share of mistakes, but one I never make is to underestimate the power of things. People imbued from childhood with the myth of the primacy of feeling seldom like to admit they really want things as much as they might want love, but my career has convinced me that plenty of them do. And some want things a lot worse than they want love.”

“If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.”