“The poor (horse) had sure got a reason to be mean, and I guess he's at the point where he figgers no human is his friend any more.”

“For that pony had got tangled up in the cowboy's heartstrings a heap more than that cowboy wanted to let on, even to himself. He couldn't get away from how he missed him.”

“There was so much life wrapped up in that pony's hide that it was mighty hard for him to settle down and behave...he sometimes had to bust out and do things that wasn't at all proper...”

“In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views--I just didn't think about religion.”

“He was the smartest and best-read person any of us had every known, but he wore his learning so lightly and had such curiosity about other people that he had the ability to make everyone around him feel smart and well-read.”

“Personally, I have always felt that the best doctor in the world is the Veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter...he's just got to know.”

“It’s like that, isn’t it? Just as Raymond Chandler says, ‘The first kiss is dynamite, the second is routine and then you take her clothes off,’ It had been like that for Alan in his previous affairs, even the extended one he had had with Sybil while Naomi was pregnant. Sure, Alan went on enjoying sex with Sybil, but at a fundamental level his lust for her had died the very first time he felt the shock of her pubic bone against his, and knew that they were now truly welded into one another. Alan was a one-thrust man. Not that he’d ever been exactly promiscuous. Perhaps it would have been better for all concerned if he had been. Rather, his sentiment self-absorption had managed to gild each of these terminal thrusts with enough self-regarding burnish for him to sustain the ‘relationships’ that legitimised them for months; and in at least two instances, for years. ”