The authors’ original words do their work more justice than any book review I write, and when grouped together, the quotes become atmospheric of the state they are set in. I hope you enjoy this addition of a “Favorite Quotes” series to my Andrea Reads America coverage.

From The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz by Manuel Ramos

“Our hands met in a halfhearted attempt at the Chicano handshake, but we didn’t quite remember all the intricacies.”

“He had a gleam in his eyes, like mica dust, and he was either higher than a kite or in love.”

“I had seen him like this one other time – the night Rocky Ruiz was shotgunned to death by masked and hooded men on a dark country road, twenty years ago.”

“Before I could face the pile of deadlines stacked on my desk, I convinced myself I had to have a breakfast burrito and real coffee.”

“He stopped by one Indian summer afternoon when the moon was high above the snowy mountain peaks along the horizon.”

“Chicano was a deragatory word as far as [Jesús] was concerned. ‘If you want to be called ‘boy Mexican,’ that’s up to you, boy.'”

From Plainsong by Kent Haruf

“The evening wasn’t cold yet when the girl left the café. But the air was turning sharp, with a fall feeling of loneliness coming.”

“Outside the house the wind came up suddenly out of the west and the tail vane turned with it and the blades of the windmill spun in a red whir, then the wind died down and the blades slowed and stopped.”

“We’d drive around out in the country for an hour with the windows rolled down and we’d talk and he’d say funny things and the radio would be tuned in to Denver, and all the time the night air would be coming in.”

“The sky was clear and crowded with stars, the stars looked hard and pure.”

“When they were inside the house the McPheron brothers’ faces turned shiny and red as beets and the tops of their heads steamed in the cool room. They looked like something out of an old painting, of peasants, laborers resting after work.”

“They took the first oatmeal cookies out of the oven and now there was the smell of cinnamon and fresh baking in the dark little room.”

“Once he was outside, the midnight air was cold and frosty. Little pretty glittering flecks of ice were falling under the street lights.”

From Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas

“If she fell, the snow would cover her up, and nobody would know where she was until she melted out in the spring.”

“May, June, July. I’ve seen it snow in Middle Swan every month of the year. If you like snow, you’ll be happy here.”

“It’s not mining, it’s dredging. A real miner works underground, not on a rackety boat.”

“A quilt’s like a family Bible. It’s got everybody’s mark on it, memories of everybody’s lives.”

“Hennie wondered why mountain men always seemed runted – rooted to the ground as if they were built for long winters and heavy snow.”

“Just when you think it might be spring, another storm blows in. Always happens.”

“‘Women here are as tough as mountains,’ she said, ‘and your wife’s a mountain woman now. She can handle anything that comes down her trail.'”

“The wind had come up, sliding down from the high peaks, gathering force, until it reached Middle Swan as an angry gale, shaking the ice on the trees, for a fog the night before had frozen on the limbs.”

“The best kind of mining was lode mining, following a gold vein as it twisted and turned underground. Lode mining took talent and was the way God intended for men to mine gold.”

“There was nothing that brought women together like quilting and childbirth.”