Dan Groat

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

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

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.

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

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.

The gear teeth of his mind, the cogs of the brain__ 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.

One of the worst things I__e learned about getting older is that there seems to be more change that you don__ like than there was when you were younger and you can__ do nothin_ about it.

The world bein_ so small ain__ always a good thing for those of us who ain__ searchin_ for new and different stuff.

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.

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.

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

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

What kind of country has this become? Decent people can__ do anything without being watched.

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

There__ nothing wrong with fighting when you have no choice. As a matter of fact, it__ what you should do, but when you fight, fight to win.

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

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