“Womenfolks have powerful imaginations when it comes to a man, an’ she can read things into him he never knew was there, and like as not, they ain’t!”

“He never knew when he was whipped ... So he never was.......”

“Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning.”

“Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him.”

“It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man... and dead.”

“When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.”

“I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn.”