Everybody dies. It’s no risk to lose your life. You knew it was lost from the beginning.

If the forest has a day of fire and the heat of the flames does not consume a special tree, it will still be changed; charred, but still standing.

I had always been a boy in this place, and many of the trees and rocks and streams had been old men when I knew them. Some had died. All had changed. I knew that. I had changed the most.

The world bein’ so small ain’t always a good thing for those of us who ain’t searchin’ for new and different stuff.

One of the worst things I’ve learned about getting older is that there seems to be more change that you don’t like than there was when you were younger and you can’t do nothin’ about it.

The gear teeth of his mind, the cogs of the brain’s machinery that propelled his thoughts, were grinding to a halt, too long forced to fight against the friction of agony without the aid of hope, the lubricant for the soul.

You can be spiritual all by yourself. Everybody has a soul. But to be religious, it seems like you need other people, and then sometimes it becomes more about the people than the soul.

Porches could be cleaned with a broom in a few minutes, but the soul could not be swept. It had to be shaken. And shaking the loess from a soul took a lifetime and more strength than most people had.

It remains for you to save one before saving others, to lead one before leading others.

Books required no interchanges of thoughts and feelings, no trading of expectations, no traffic of words, no menace of real loss. Reading books required far less energy than reading people; the pages seldom disappointed him and they never died.

Reading had always been, through bad, boring, or better times, his best connection to humans.

If all you do is think about what you need, you’re no better than an animal in the woods, and no smarter either. To be human, you’ve got to want. It makes you smarter and stronger.

Peace, a commodity purchased with friendship and safety and anything comfortable and all things familiar; peace that was a pleasant melody playing through the moments of their day; a chord striking only the notes of security and agreement and understanding and order.

Devotion to self is necessary. First, place the mask on yourself and breathe deeply. Then help the others. If you don’t save yourself, they will die.

Music is the sound of unspoken thoughts.

Does the plain, simple beauty of life get buried under society’s so-called required daily activities or is that just true of me? No, I know I’m not alone in that feeling. We all get caught up in the making and spending of money. I know it’s not just me.

Just make sure the day doesn’t pass without sayin’ what’s in your heart. Sometimes you pass up those chances and they’re gone forever.

There are struggles you cannot win, but a man can meet his own heart if value is found in loss. Give yourself permission to cry.

A silence overtook the odd family in their odd surroundings as loss became the mockery of the moment, and they were caught up in the emotional release that is common in a theater audience after the sudden ending of a tragic movie; the curtain closes and the people are still in their seats, numb and sighing their way back into reality.

We are born among relatives. Family is defined by loyalty.

I can’t tell you what’s in all of God’s plans, but I do know part of them. He empowers you with reason and will. Those are your strengths. That’s what gives you the chance to be great in his sight. He gave you a mind and codes to live by so you could be in charge of your own actions.

Some people get what they want because they grab the power and swing it, and some people don’t.

Politics is all about dividing up the power. Washington D.C. likes to talk about spreading the wealth, but never spreading the power.

Governments have absolutely no interest in self-reliance. It defeats one of the purposes for their existence. They encourage and thrive on dependency. The more of it they sell, the more necessary they are, and the more power and money they need.

The power of our country relies on the character that comes out of each of our homes.

The world has a way of dragging down our mood.

Seek until there is no hope and then seek further. Seek without end. Trudge on without tiring and without fear and without disheartenment. Trudge on, for it is within you to fight any enemy. It is who you are. It is your past and your present and your future. You will not quit. You cannot quit. Your breath is your courage, and as you breathe, so must you hope or you are already dead.

Our bird of hope was being denied the altitude it sought, just free enough to fly dangerously close to the reality of the treetops.

Sometimes when the three of us were together on our own, we would have a good time. I was pretty young, but sometimes we would go off in the woods and build forts and fight Indians and I think things were about as close to fine as they ever got right then during those times. In the woods. No parents. No yelling.

As you get older, you have to be willing and able to choose your own path for your life. And once you choose it, you walk it with strength. If you meet evil along the way, know that it is supposed to make you afraid, but it’s not supposed to stop you. You walk through the fear and you walk through the evil, and you don’t let either one become your master.

A government that thinks it can remedy personal failure is an intrusion in everybody’s life. No law is going to cure a human’s lack of physical or mental effectiveness. I’d rather see democracy promote strength than reward weakness.

As an adult I had mastered the art of looking without seeing and listening without hearing and eating without tasting and maybe even existing without living.

It’s a funny thing, one day you’re living and the next day you’re not sometimes, whether you have plans or not. Wishes and wants get trumped by the reaper every time. I don’t even know if I would want a warning if it was my time. I think I’d rather be surprised.

Being tough today might cause you to be weak in the future.

Sometimes, you need to spit stuff out in words to get it better arranged in your head. I figure if you never talk about it, it just picks its own spot and lays there and festers.

I wonder if God hears prayers if the only time you make them is when you’re in trouble.

The bones of the oak tree that had stood by the spring branch during my youth were scattered about the ground, pieces of the skeleton of a majestic life that had passed while I was off growing up and old.

We, the beggar class, have little to lose and our expectations are, at best, modest, and when we suffer, it seems we suffer to the depths, for there is nothing in our lives nor in our souls to buoy our hope. Nothing in the way of the blackness. It sinks to the bottom as the lead weight that is despair. We look forward such a short distance that our spirit is myopic, not to be corrected by any lens within our world.

I am not wise enough to know if there is ever purpose in tragedy, if there is ever virtue in resisting it. If it cannot be overcome, then grief has beaten you, and you are right to say so.

What a wonderful sadness to miss the one you have loved forever, it seems, and know that she is waiting at home.

Memories with laughter are the best ones to keep.

He knew that prejudice was a necessary part of the weak spirit of some men.

It’s as close to true freedom as I have come. Not freedom of, but freedom from; freedom from the debris of life that piles up and forces us to dig and dig for our original self, who we were once upon a time, innocent and wonderfully naïve, as authentically pure as a human can be.

Time does not heal, but it can liberate. A race run well can never be lost.

Hope was always hard to find in the darkness.

Doing without will wear on you until temptation is stronger than character, sometimes.

Evil won’t leave you alone until you take a stand or until you’re dead.

Evil stinks and it doesn’t disappear just because you want it to. You can still smell it with your eyes closed.

There is no end to the hatred in men, but there is an end to the hatred in a man. If your hatred is just, and deeds will get you to the end of it, then go and do what must be done.

We learn to love when we’re young. If we learn hating better, it has to go somewhere. We can hate ourselves or we can hate somebody else. Most people would rather hate somebody else.

I assumed that looking back reminded older guys of what they had shot at and missed, the what-ifs, the good memories, the bad, the people left behind, the people who moved on.

I don’t know how a reporter would ever understand a politician. Your job is supposed to be about finding the truth and enlightening people. Right? A politician’s job is about hiding the truth and fooling people. Right? You want us to be better informed so we get smarter. They think we’re dumb and it’s to their advantage to keep us that way.

How do we keep convincing young people to die in fights they didn’t start for reasons we’re too devious to tell the truth about? It’s way too easy for governments to spend other people’s blood. Maybe only the sons and daughters of those who declare the wars should be allowed to fight and die.

People don’t die so the universe can gauge your reaction. They die because life is finite.

Human thought and human caring go on in one brain and one heart at a time. Groups are necessary. Regulations are necessary. Government, I would hope limited government, is necessary. But it all starts with the individual. Everything that is accomplished starts with one person, even if the group steps in and helps; it’s still one brain and one heart at a time.

A hopeful journey is more important than the destination.

Men who have been in war have a different attitude about being wronged.

Back home. What wonderful words. What a wonderful place.

I wish but to share your gifts as a young boy on his birthday would excitedly rip open his packages to the view of others.

My world was very limited in size and experience. Small things took on extra importance, at least to a child.

It made him wonder if all things taken from their home too soon lost some of their bloom.

He had no ability to give up. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to quit, he couldn’t. It wasn’t in him. It never had been.

Surviving is about need. Living is about want.

If you decide to take somebody on, don’t look behind you, because there won’t be anybody there. You’ll be all alone.

They understood that brave men could be injured more by pity than by disease.

Gifford Ulrich didn’t know the distance from despair to hope, but he knew hope didn’t sleep in alleys.

As I have aged, I’ve been lucky never to reach old. Old is always at least five or ten years beyond my current calendar stage.

A person gets built and stands for a few years and then nature’s demolition team comes in.

My name Quan. Quan Nguyen. This Kim-Ly, wife. We next door. Do nails. We with Mr. Blaylock. He fight, we fight. We come here from Viet Nam. This good country, but sometimes, good people in good country have to fight.

Winning and losing was suddenly elevated to be about things that had no score and no teams and no uniforms; just one player at a time dealing with his life, his own struggle, his own triumph and torment.

Those who show no loyalty give up the right to expect any.

Fear was the hand of the devil holding a scalding hot branding iron and touching your brain and your stomach and yelling at you to run with leaden feet.

True genius is a complete stranger to most, a momentary acquaintance to others, a lasting friend to few.

In this country our principles should not be silent.

Now, it’s time for me to lock up and go. Listen to me. Lock up an empty building that’s gonna be torn down. Makes no sense. Like an old man tellin’ a lie to his son from his death bed. What’s the point? Who besides yourself are you fooling?

We get so beat down by what we need, sometimes we forget how to want.

The weak thrive on indulgence.

He knew most men only heard what they wanted to hear, and he had no desire to be like most men.

Despite his best efforts, maintaining dignity in a head attached to an unclean body wrapped in unclean garments was a battle that encouraged surrender.

There’s nothing wrong with fighting when you have no choice. As a matter of fact, it’s what you should do, but when you fight, fight to win.

I wonder how long it takes for these people we elect to forget who they work for?

What kind of country has this become? Decent people can’t do anything without being watched.

It must be great to spend time in a spot and if you walk away, it’s so much better than before because of something you did.