The Big Sky Quotes

“God must like to get off by Himself sometimes and caper. Must get mighty tiresome, keepin' tally on folks and gettin' the sun up and tuckin' it in bed and bringin' the rain on and all, and all the time actin' stiff and proper. That surely was it, God must like to throw Himself around some and be silly if He felt like it.”
― A.B. Guthrie Jr., The Big Sky

“He had lived a man's life, and now it was at an end, and what had he to show for it? Two horses and a few fixin's and a letter of credit for three hundred and forty-three dollars. That was all, unless you counted the way he had felt about living and the fun he had had while time ran along unnoticed. It had been rich doings, except that he wondered at the last, seeing everything behind him and nothing ahead. It was strange about time: it slipped under a man like quiet water, soft and unheeded but taking a part of him with every drop - a little quickness of the muscles, a little sharpness of the eye, a little of his youngness, until by and by he found it had taken the best of him almost unbeknownst. He wanted to fight it then, to hold it back, to catch what had been borne away. It wasn't that he minded going under, it wasn't that he was afraid to die and rot and forget and be forgotten; it was that things were lost to him more and more - the happy feeling, the strong doing, the fresh taste for things like drink and women and danger, the friends he had fought and funned with, the notion that each new day would be better than the last, good as the last one was. A man's later life was all a long losing, of friends and fun and hope, until at last time took the mite that was left of him and so closed the score.”
― A.B. Guthrie Jr., The Big Sky

“All the same he got a pinch of misery, thinking, just as he had sometimes in Kentucky when he'd be out in the woods, feeling good that he was alone, with everything to himself, and then he would spy someone and it would all be spoiled, as if the country wasn't his any more, or the woods or the quiet.”
― A.B. Guthrie Jr., The Big Sky