"“If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.”
"
— Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove)

"'It was like that afore you got here, it's like that now, and it's going to be like that when you and me are gone, departed and left, and so there is only one rule, swing with it and smile.'"
— David Halberstam (One Very Hot Day)

"...the only brotherhood they belonged to was the one that asked that enduring question: How do I get through the next twenty minutes? They feared drys, cops, jailers, bosses, moralists, crazies, truth-tellers, and one another. they loved storytellers, liars, whores, fighters, singers, collie dogs that wagged their tails, and generous bandits. Rudy, thought Francis: he's just a bum, but who ain't?"
— William Kennedy (Ironweed)

"Why was it that suicide kept rising up in Francis' mind? Wake up in the weeds outside Pittsburgh, half frozen over, too cold to move, flaked out 'n' stiffer than a chunk of old iron, and you say to yourself: Francis, you don't ever want to put in another night, another mornin', like this one was. Time to go take a header off the bridge.
But after a while you stand up, wipe the frost out of your ear, go someplace to get warm, bum a nickel for coffee, and then start walkin' toward somewheres else that ain't near no bridge. "
— William Kennedy (Ironweed)