Quotes from Kent Haruf

In terms of showing their emotions and acting on them, my women characters are a lot more advanced than the men.

I'm attempting to broaden my novels' scope through landscape and weather, leaves falling off trees, overnight storms, timeless elements which, irrespective of human endeavour, have always been there and, as long as there is life and snow, will always be there.

The evening wasn't cold yet... But the air was turning sharp, with a fall feeling of loneliness coming. Something unaccountable pending in the air.

Love is the most important part of life, isn't it. If you have love you can live in this world in a true way and if you love each other you can see past everything and accept what you don't understand and forgive what you don't know or don't like. Love is all. Love is patient and boundless and right-hearted and long-suffering. I hope you may love each other all your days of life together. And I hope you may have a great many years of those days.

I wonder if you would come and sleep in the night with me. And talk.

Why hell, look at us. Old men alone. Decrepit old bachelors out here in the country seventeen miles from the closest town which don't amount to much of a good goddamn even when you get there. Think of us. Crotchety and ignorant. Lonesome. Independent. Set in all our ways. How you going to change now at this age of life? I can't say, Raymond said. But I'm going to. That's what I know.

This boy needs a dog. What makes you say that? He needs someone or something to play with besides his phone and an old man and an old woman doddering around.

Don't you have any scars? Inside. Do you? Of course. You don't act like it. I don't intend to. It doesn't do much good, does it?

Who does ever get what they want? It doesn't seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It's always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings. Except I still say that this isn't true of you and me. Not right now, not today.

You're going to mess this up, do you know that? You don't even see what's in front of you. You're like everybody else. No, I'm not. You're dreaming backward.

You're going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind anyway. This is your chance.

Addie and Louis sat down in front. She had arranged the funeral and told the minister about Ruth. He hadn't known her at all. She had stopped going to any church because of her feeling about orthodoxy and the childish ways in which churches talked and thought about God.

You're not talking to her, Maggie Jones said. You and Raymond don't talk like you should to that girl. Women want to hear some conversation in the evening. We don't think that's too much to ask. We're willing to put up with a lot from you men, but in the evening we want to hear some talking. We want to have a little conversation in the house.

quit trying to fix things and we settled into our long polite and quiet life.

This ain't going to be no goddamn Sunday school picnic.

People in their houses at night. These ordinary lives. Passing without their knowing it. I'd hoped to recapture something. The officer stared at him. The precious ordinary. I

I've come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We're just in this physical body till we go back to spirit.

Love is the most important part of life isn't it. If you have love, you can live in this world in a true way and if you love each other you can see past everything and accept what you don't understand and forgive what you don't now or don't like. Love is all. Love is patient and boundless and right-hearted and long-suffering.

People in their houses at night. These ordinary lives. Passing without their knowing it. Bid hoped to recapture something. The officer stared at him. The precious ordinary.

Alene looked out toward the fading sky. There was only a little light remaining. It would turn nighttime now and soon they would return to the house. I would be too cool to sit outside. It would get dark out. I'm so lonely, she said. I had my chance and I lost it.

The shaggy saddle horses, already winter-coated, stood with their backs to the wind, watching the two men in the corral, the horses' tails blowing out, their breath snorted out in white plumes and carried away in tatters by the wind.

I've come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We're

I'm talking about getting through the night, she says. And lying warm in bed, companionably. Lying down in bed together and you staying the night. The nights are the worst. Don't you think? Yes. I think so, he says. Our souls at night

They don't come to church on Sunday morning to think about new ideas or even the old important ones. They want to hear what they've been told before, with only some small variation on what they've been hearing all their lives, and then they want to go home and eat pot roast and say it was a good service and feel satisfied. But