“To be the best in the world in anything, even 'long distance spitting', implies a grave, heavy and suffocating responsibility.”

“The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.”

“I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.”

“If you get yourself killed, I'll find your grave and spit on it," she threatened.”

“Life… is only heavy and none else; there is only the one trip, all heavy. Heavy that leads to the grave. For everyone and everything.”

“With a heavy heart, I turned and walked away. I knew that as long as I lived I'd never forget the two little graves and the sacred red fern.”

“I went back to those graves not long afterward and found as I stood there that sadness was a very heavy thing. My body weighed twice what it had only a moment earlier, as if those graves were pulling me down toward them.”

“He trusted neither of them as far as he could spit, and he was a poor spitter, lacking both distance and control.”

“But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.”

“To contemplate a thing implies maintaining oneself OUTSIDE it, resolved to keep a distance between it and ourselves.”