"Often (breathes there a man?) I can work up some proud warmth about the fact that I indubitably am [a Texan]. A lot of the time, though, I'd as soon be forty other kinds of men I've known. I've lived much away from that region, and have liked most of the places I've lived in. I used to know who the good bullfighters were and why they were good. I'm familiar with the washed silent streets of Manhattan at five o'clock in the morning, and what Los Angeles promises in the evening when you're young with money on your hip, and once almost saw the rats change sewers swarmingly in Paris, and did see dawn wash the top of the old wall at Avila.... I've walked in the green freshness of mountain mornings in tropical lands, and have heard the strange birds cry, and the street vendors, and maybe music somewhere, and have felt the hit of it like a fist in my stomach, going sleepy-eyed out onto a balcony under the green mountains and above flame-flower trees to thank g__* for life and for being there. And I'm glad I have." —from John Graves, Goodbye to a River, Vintage, 1988, pp. 144-145.  *god.