Key Quotations
Kelton: "A boy don't get to be a man with clean britches on." (ch. 2)
Charlie: "Kindness is one thing this world is short of." (ch. 3)
Teofilo Garcia (foreman of shearing crew): "Half the world is hungry. A man can't cry for all of them." (ch. 3)
Page Mauldin: "If you ain't there when the balloon goes up, they make the flight without you." (ch. 3)
Kelton: "Other places might have several drouths in a single summer. Texas was more likely to have several summers in a single drouth." (ch. 4)
Charlie: "As a way of makin' money, ranchin' is awful highly overrated." (ch. 4)
Charlie: "You know what it is that makes a man get old? It's people tellin' him so all the time till he gets to believin' it." (ch. 6)
Jose Rivera (young Mexican drifter): "A man is what his father was." (ch. 6)
Pike (ranchhand): "I've made a bet with several people that it never will rain again in this country...Two of them have already paid off." (ch. 9)
Charlie: "Rain is what we need. Charity we've always lived without." (ch. 12)
Kelton: "There was always a good side to adversity if a man looked hard enough for it." (ch. 12)
Charlie: "I've got as much business in Washington as a boar hog has with a set of tits." (ch. 13)
Mary: "There is a point where compromise costs him too much." (ch. 14)
Mary (to Tom): "You can't understand him because you've never believed in anything as strong as he does. Maybe that's not your fault; maybe it's ours because we failed to teach you how to believe in something." (ch. 14)
Mary: "The world thinks more of a man who makes a mistake because he believes in it than of one who does the right thing because it comes easy and without belief." (ch. 14)
Charlie: "The Indian would take down his tepee and leave with the buffalo. It always rained somewhere; that's where he would go. We can't do that. Anywhere we went, somebody else would have a prior claim." (ch. 15)
Charlie: "The road to hell is paved and bridged with good intentions." (ch. 15)
Charlie (to Page Mauldin): "You have the strength. All you need is the will. You don't have to have the whole pie. Settle for a slice of it; just be sure it's a good slice." (ch. 16)
Manuel Flores (to ranchhand Chuy Garcia): "He didn't ask for anybody's help. If he hadn't gotten sick I think he would have made it all by himself. It wasn't fair to see him go under just because he was sick. Whatever else he might be, he's a man." (ch. 19)
Emmett Rodale: "Goes to show that a man shouldn't lose faith in his young just because they dance to a different music. They'll do the right thing in the end, most of them, if they've been brought up the proper way." (ch. 19)
Charlie: "A man can always start again. A man always has to." (ch. 20)
