Are you expecting a war party? Call asked the judge. You seem to be thoroughly armed. I expect perdition, always have, the judge replied. I keep this building at my back, and several guns handy, in ca...
Could put no weight on the wounded ankle at
You told me to stay, July said. I know I did, son, Augustus said. I’m sure you wish you had. But yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back. Go on with your digging and I’ll tidy up.
You should be proud of her. She cracked the wall, and I never thought I'd live to see it cracked.What are you talking about? I said. What wall?The one you built around you, Jeannie said. Don't say it...
Without realizing it, he had been wasting time—years and years of time, time that would never be his again. He had failed to take advantage of the diversity of opportunity that had been, all along, av...
When the lightning struck, the whole prairie would be bathed for a second in white light.
What’s that? Mr. Bynum said. He leaned over me, fists doubled up. Vagina, fallopian tube, penis, scrotum, I said. It took them both aback. I meant for it to. That ain’t what you said, Mr. Bynum said....
What would you know about anything, Jasper? Augustus asked. Age don’t slow a man’s whoring. It’s lack of income that does that. No more prosperous than you look, I wouldn’t think you’d know much about...
Trees had been so common that it was a shock to ride out on the plains and discover that there was a part of earth where there weren’t any.
The truth was, most plans did fail, to one degree or another, for one reason or another. He had survived as a Ranger because he was quick to respond to what he had actually found, not because his plan...
The older the violin, the sweeter the music.
Such is the life and death of a good cowboy.
She had always loved to tease and considered it an irony of her life that she was often drawn to men who didn’t recognize teasing even when she was inflicting it on them.
She didn’t know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn’t want to touch it or even look at it.
Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the...
See this page of paper? It’s blank, Scull said. That, sir, is the most frightening battlefield in the world: the blank page. I mean to fill this paper with decent sentences, sir—this page and hundreds...
Perhaps, he thought, as he turned back, that was what Augustus wanted: just to be free for a few days, just to saddle his horse and ride.
Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.
Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity--they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else gro...
Nobody run off with her, Roscoe said. She just run off with herself, I guess.