As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, t...he moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Turn 'em loose.... Wherever they go, they'll be on my land. My land. We're here and we're gonna stay here. Gimme ten years and I'l...l have that brand on the gates of the greatest ranch in Texas. The big house'll be down by the river, the corrals and the barns behind it. It'll be a good place to live in. Ten years and I'll have the Red River "D" on more cattle than you've looked at anywhere. I'll have that brand on enough beef to feed the whole country. Good beef for hungry people. Beef to make 'em strong, to make 'em grow. But it takes work, it takes sweat, and it takes time, lots of time. It takes years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen and all of a sudden they've reached puberty, they believ...e that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all... right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this f...oreigner?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, yo...u were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can ...write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Funny ain't it. Here I am worrying about a woman. Men don't worry much about women when they're around. But when it gets way off f...rom home like we are now, and where he knows he's going a lot further away ... I mean that's when a woman gets workin' in your mind. You reckon you're a fool for not noticin' before how, how big a part of things they be. There ain't nothin' like seein' a woman's face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »