Hell Is Empty (Walt Longmire, #7)

by Craig Johnson

He smiled as though he didn’t know how, and I figured it was the only one he had—the one with a lot of teeth and no warmth.

By all rights it was spring, but every year somebody forgot to tell the mountains.

‘The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.’ ” “Pascal.”

“We must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.”

remembered one of my late wife’s slogans about smoking: “Cigarettes are killers that travel in packs.”

“You collect things as you go—the things you think are important—and soon they weigh you down until you realize that these things you cared so much about mean nothing at all. Our natures are our natures.” He grunted. “And they are all we are left with.”

The forest is never silent, no matter the season; there are always sounds, and the trick is simply slowing yourself to the point where you can hear them.

It’s never about who’s the fastest, strongest, toughest—it’s always about who, when everyone else would pause, will commit.

We summon up the devils we need to punish us for the things that we’ve done.

the book lists that the extended members of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department made up for Saizarbitoria. I was concerned that it might slow the narrative, so I have included them, with their comments, here. From Walt: The Grapes of Wrath, Les Misérables, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby-Dick, The Ox-Bow Incident, A Tale of Two Cities, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote (where your nickname came from), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and anything by Anton Chekhov. From Henry: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Cheyenne Autumn, War and Peace, The Things They Carried, Catch-22, The Sun Also Rises, The Blessing Way, Beyond Good and Evil, The Teachings of Don Juan, Heart of Darkness, The Human Comedy, The Art of War. From Vic: Justine, Concrete Charlie: The Story of Philadelphia Football Legend Chuck Bednarik, Medea (you’ll love it; it’s got a great ending), The Kama Sutra, Henry and June, The Onion Field, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Zorba the Greek, Madame Bovary, Richie Ashburn’s Phillies Trivia (fuck you, it’s a great book). From Ruby: The Holy Bible (New Testament), The Pilgrim’s Progress, Inferno, Paradise Lost, My Ántonia, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Poems of Emily Dickinson, My Friend Flicka, Our Town. From Dorothy: The Gastronomical Me, The French Chef Cookbook (you don’t eat, you don’t read), Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Something Fresh, The Sound and...