“Nothing moves fast in Texas except the windmillsAnd the hawk that rises up with a clatter of wings.(Nothing more startling there than sudden motion,Everything is so still.)”

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.”

“Suddenly, over the slope, as if tethered to a cord of air drawing quickly upward, came a Northern Harrier, motionless but for its rising. So still was the bird - wings, tail, head - it might have been a museum specimen. Then, as if atop the wind, it slid down the ridge, tilted a few times, veered, tacked up the hill, its wings hardly shifting. I though, if I could be that hawk for one hour I'd never again be just a man.”

“Hawk?"He gazed up at her, still crouched on the floor, ready to pounce if she so much as moved an inch.”

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.”

“You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.”