“You know something, Red? … I think we got a good thing going on here.”

“You know, son, I don't think there's such a thing as an easy life. There's always going to be hard work and there will always be misfortunes we can't control, lurking out at the edges - storms, sickness, wolves. But there is such a thing as a good life and I think that we have one here.”

“The biggest challenge to excellence is being good at something, because to move from good to great requires your willingness to re-think everything you’ve done that got you to be good. In fact, the very thing that got you where you are might be the very thing that stops you from going where you say you want to be.”

“A hanging, though, was something different. I got to thinking. We hadn’t never been to nothing just to have a good time. A hanging was special and we was all getting to go.”

“We done something brave and good here....Maybe [we] don't want to be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad.”

“The gaiaphage. That's the other word they use. 'Gaia,' as in world. 'Phage,' as in a worm or something that eats something up. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say I don't think something that calls itself a 'world eater' is a good thing.”