Quotes from C.J. Box

In Joe's experience, the person who talked the most very often had the least to say.

On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy.

Children were not pets, not furniture, not items put on earth to bring pleasure to people who owned them, she raged to herself.

Yellowstone, a place so special and awe-inspiring that after exploring it in 1871, the Hayden Expedition conceived of the original concept of the world's first national park—a set-aside of 2. 2 million acres containing more than ten thousand thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife—so no man or corporation could ever own it.

A Wyoming vegetarian is someone who only eats meat once a day.

Wyomingites, Joe had observed, didn't know what to do when it rained except get out of it, watch it through the window, and wait for it to go away.

We're trivial pissants in the big scheme of things, fleas, fly shit in the pepper.

Like most men, he had a tough time believing that his wife had had any kind of interesting life before she met him. Which was ridiculous on its face.

We are both disciples of the Louis Jordan song 'What's the Use of Getting Sober (When You're Gonna Get Drunk Again).

Joe had always considered individual words as finite units of currency, and he believed in savings.

I've come to realize something that for three weeks in my life I'd begun to doubt: There are good people in the world. Good people, kind people. xxx They all could have chosen to be cold, cruel, indifferent. That would have been easy. Brutality, I think, comes naturally to human beings. But they chose to be good, even if what they did could be questioned within the strict confines of the law.

The relationship between a father and his daughters, Joe had discovered, was a remarkably powerful thing. They looked to him to accomplish greatness; they expected it as a matter of course because he was their dad and therefore a great man.

Jim Harrison's novels, John McPhee's nonfiction, Flannery O'Connor's short stories, and the crime novels of John Sandford, Ken Bruen, and T. Jefferson Parker. His books

The headless trunk was discovered impaled on a metal fencepost on the edge of the town park.

FEDERAL LANDOWNERSHIP (TOP 12 STATES) STATE TOTAL SQUARE MILES % OWNED BY FEDERAL GOV. 1. Nevada 61,548 87.6 2. Utah 35,723 68 3. Alaska 244,627 67 4. Idaho 34,520 65.2 5. Oregon 34,084 55.5 6. California 49,842 49.9 7. Wyoming 30,902 49.7 8. Arizona 32,228 44.3 9. Colorado 25,851 38.9 10. New Mexico 28,143 36.2 11. Washington 13,984 32.8 12. Montana 29,718 31.9 Source: National Wilderness Institute

River cottonwoods were so drunk with color the leaves hurt his eyes.

In Wyoming, the people owned the game animals, and they took their ownership to heart.

Pronghorn antelope were the second fastest mammals on earth—only an African cheetah could outrun them.

There aren't four seasons in Rocky Mountains, but three: summer, winter, and mud.

He doubted that the drivers hurtling down the interstate even noticed the herd, the coyote, or the dogfight in the clouds. Like so many vistas in the state, Joe thought, it looked like a whole lot of nothing at first. But if one stopped and observed, really sat still for a few minutes and observed, there was a lot going on. The high-steppe desert was alive and complex. •

We're bringing good little people into the world who have a mom and a dad who care about them and love them. They know right from wrong because their parents teach them which is which, and because their parents live by example. Somewhere, there is a reward for us, Joe. We need to believe that. We won't just be abandoned.

Because it's indicative of a tired mind-set. It's nothing more than mental jerking off: puffed-up officials trying to make order out of random acts when all around them their world is about to explode—but they just don't know it, or care. It's like trying to find the fly shit in the pepper. I mean, who cares?

Yellowstone was established as the first national park in the world in 1872 by an act of Congress. The boundaries were drawn before Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana were granted statehood,

Do you think that the day you stop listening to new music is the day you decide you're on the path to old age? Like you've given up on new stuff and you resign yourself to music you've already heard? Like you're through discovering and all you want to do is rummage through your old things?