A woman such as this one could snuff the light and take you into darkness. -Robert James Waller

One should be true to things of worth as they originally had come, and only in that way do they survive the punishment of modern times. -Robert James Waller

Life is never easy for those who dream.  -Robert James Waller

Jack Carmine’s Eighth Conjecture:  Slightly flawed perfection, in the context of long hair swept away from a woman’s neck, has a peculiar force of its own. -Robert James Waller

Jack Carmine’s Seventh Conjecture:  Stroking a woman’s hair while looking out at a rainy day is 92 percent of as good as it gets. -Robert James Waller

. . . it’s one of those things that if it ain’t true, it ought to be just for purposes of addin’ color and entertainment to a somewhat dreary universe.  -Robert James Waller  

That [lady] was nice, but she had a world-class sense of carnality about her that said if you were going to ask her to dance, you’d better know what you were doing when the music started.  [She] was territory far too wild for those who had never been out there. -Robert James Waller

In a time without codes it’s hard to know who’s calling and who’s hanging up. -Robert James Waller

If you can’t ride with Bedouins or drink gin in the Raffles bar in Singapore while wearing a white suit and lemon-yellow tie, then New Orleans is next best. -Robert James Waller

"Did you ever really practice it, the harmonica?"

"No, but I think about practicin’ sometimes.  That ought to count for somethin’, make you better somehow."

-Robert James Waller

Except for low wages and endin’ up with nothin’ but a beat-up body after fifty years of hard work, cowboyin’ is the best life there is.  -Robert James Waller

Nights like this you get all down and alone and start wanting to talk to the past, see if those you knew are still out there and okay.  Let the sound of their voices tell you it’s more than a dream, that you were actually in some other place a long time ago when it seemed like it all might run forever.       -Robert James Waller

Bad ideas seem to hide somewhere in beer bottles. -Robert James Waller

When your heart has turned all the flat colors of winter, sometimes you reach for the moment.  Sometimes you do that, looking for the warm again, trying to get back home again without getting lost in far-deep snow out in strange country, out in a place where nobody understands your words and cannot point the way for you.  -Robert James Waller