...and I Wonder If There

Then The Sun Broke Above The Crest Of The Hills And The Entire Countryside Looked Soaked In Blood, The Arroyos Deep In Shadow, The Cones Of Dead Volcanoes Stark And Biscuit-colored Against The Sky. I Could Smell Pinion Trees, Wet Sage, Woodsmoke, Cattle In The Pastures, And Creek Water That Had Melted From Snow. I Could Smell The Way The Country Probably Was When It Was Only A Dream In The Mind Of God.

I Looked At Lucas With The Pang That A Parent Feels When He Knows His Child Will Be Hurt And That It's No One's Fault And That To Try To Preempt The Rites Of Passage Is An Act Of Contempt For The Child's Courage.

I Believe Every...man Remembers The Girl He Thinks He Should Have Married. She Reappears To Him In His Lonely Moments, Or He Sees Her In The Face Of A Young Girl In The Park, Buying A Snowball Under An Oak Tree By The Baseball Diamond. But She Belongs To Back There, To Somebody Else, And That Thought Sometimes Rends Your Heart In A Way That You Never Share With Anyone Else.

Never Read Bad Stuff If You're An Artist; It Will Impair Your Own Game. I Don't Know If You Ever Played Competitive Tennis, But You Learn Not To Watch Bad Tennis; It Messes Up Your Game. Art's The Same Way.

But The Participants [in War] Never Forgot The Details Of Their Experience, And Like The Wandering Jew, They Were Condemned To Remain Their Own History Books, Each Containing A Story They Could Not Pass On To Others And From Which No One Would Learn Anything Of Value.