“Almost all of my really good times have been silent but have had to end.”

“Many Americans would die naked in the middle of the road before they'd tell you what's hurt them most. But a born Southerner will show you the cell in their heart that burns the hardest. They'll hold it out to you in their bare right hand.”

“Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.”

“Strength just comes in one brand— you stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you and keep your hair combed.”

“Every other way is like that -- him waiting for something to happen to him, daring somebody to do something nice such as come up and touch him just so he could say, 'Why in the world did you do that?' and hold on tight till whoever bothered him vanished -- and nothing about him since has ever surprised me.”

“In the next long minute, he felt an understanding spread deep down inside him, an understanding that he'd only felt with animals before--with poor old Hilda and the hawks he'd seen in tall bare trees and that buck deer, long ago in the woods, that spoke Ben's name and told him the world was a fine place to live, hard but fine.”

“Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you.”