“The man dabbed briefly at his lip with his bloody sleeve end and then cocked back his head and laughed. The sound was sharp and joyless and desperate.”

“Momma crossed her arms over her apron bib and worked the small of her back against the edge of the doorframe. Daddy drew a Tareyton out of the pack in his shirtpocket and looked straight at me and talked straight at Momma and said, “Madness.”

“It's a chore for a fellow to fear for his life more than once in an evening.”

“The husk of a man in the woods below me bled into a creek that fed into a river that sparkled gaily in the winter sun.”

“a helplessly devoted student of human frailty”

“He was accustomed to paying measurable heed only to those details that bore upon him most directly.”

“The southbound motorists crawled past, eyeing the conflagration and the quartet of cops who had arrived to eye it as well.”