“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”

“Summer coming like a car from down the highway.”

“Seems like the cold would never go away and winter would be like the bottom of my feet but then it is gone in one night and in its place comes the sun so large and laughable.”

“What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.”

“Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.”

“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)”

“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”

“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”