A mountain with a wolf on it stands a little taller

God is so cruel," she murmured reflectively, as though answering him.
"Yes," he admitted, from the vantage point of going blind. "Though maybe people are kinder if He made them that way."
"You've run with a different crowd. Rich people are nicer to rich people."
"Sure. Yes. That's why I've washed up here. Rich people couldn't have been nicer to me.

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.

'A Land of Ghosts' is a sizzling pilgrimage, haunted by trenchant foreboding that this topmost cream of creation will soon be destroyed.

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.