“The heart never forgets, never gives up, the territory marked off for those who came before.”

“Sometime I'm going to do an essay called 'The Virtues of Amateurism' for all of those people who wish they earned their living in the arts. The market kills more artistic people than anything else. It's a world of safety out there, for most people. They want safety, the magazines and manufacturers give them safety, give them homogeneity, give them the familiar and comfortable, don't challenge them.”

“We're giving up free range, getting organized, feathering our emotions. Efficiency an effectiveness and all those other pieces of intellectual artifice. And with the loss of free range, the cowboy disappears, along with the mountain lion and gray wolf. There's not much room left for travelers.”

“Francesca said nothing, wondering about a man to whom the difference between a pasture and a meadow seemed important, who got excited about sky color, who wrote a little poetry but not much fiction. Who played the guitar, who earned his living by images and carried his tools in knapsacks. Who seemed like the wind. And moved like it. Came from it, perhaps.”

“In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.”

“And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.”

“Once a person knows a kiss and a kind word, you can't blame him for never wanting to live without them again.”