Dead men don’t pay for baths, haircuts, meals, or beds. Dead men don’t buy new clothes, or ammunition, or saddles. Dead men don’t desire fancy Coffeyville boots with Texas stars laid into the shank. T...
Celestina Giuliani learned the word slander at her cousin's baptism.
Anne shrieked with laughter, but George yelled, I don’t suppose we could get a little gravity around here? and D.W. hollered back, Nope. All we got is levity. And thus began the first morning of the J...
A tale begins and where it ends, matters. Who tells the story and why, that makes all the difference.
[I]t is easier to ask forgiveness than to obtain permission.
The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances, is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hatin...
The dachshund is a perfectly engineered dog. It is precisely long enough for a single standard stroke of the back, but you aren't paying for any superfluous leg.
Maybe poetry is the only way we can get near the truth of God.… And when the metaphors fail, we think it’s God who’s failed us!
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
In Texas, rocks are considered an adequate weaponry during schoolyard scuffles. Dallas children carry a brace of loaded pistols, a concealed Derringer, and a 6 inch Toadsticker in one boot. That's the...
I think the world will be a better place when science has swept all religion into the dustbin of history. What is religion but a shared belief in things that cannot be known? When we substitute concur...
I know this will sound glib, but don’t pretend you aren’t feeling what you feel. That’s how things slide into hell. Feelings are facts, she said, her voice a little hard, as she began to walk again. L...
I am where I want to be, they each thought. I am grateful to be here. In their own ways, they all gave themselves up to God’s will and trusted that whatever happened now was meant to be. At least for...
House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological ins...
Horses are mirrors. They'll show you back whatever you show them. Watch a man with a horse, and you'll see what's inside his own self.
Hope—cruelest of the evils that escaped Pandora’s box—smiled on him gently all that summer.
He had also discovered the outermost limit of faith and, in doing so, had located the exact boundary of despair. It was at that moment that he learned, truly, to fear God.
God save us from idealists! They dream of a world without injustice, and what crime won't they commit to get it! I swear, Mirella, I'll settle for a world with good manners.
Giuliani could never understand the price scholarship boys paid for their education: the inevitable alienation from your uncomprehending family, from roots, from your own first person, from the origin...
Flaubert tells us that three things are required for happiness: stupidity, selfishness, and good health. I am, he told Morgan, an unhappy man