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" It would be a big mistake to think that Chekhov was a natural, that he did not have to work for his effects and singular style. "

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" Back when I was young, lists seemed like fences on the open range. But secretly, I was pleased to be corralled among other literary thoroughbreds. "

" If someone like my father chooses to criticise Israeli policies, it's not because he is a self-hating Jew, but because he is not prepared to live in a state of self-denial. "

" As Annie Proulx is to Wyoming, so is Jane Candia Coleman to Arizona. "

" Heinrich Heine once imagined the exiled Israelite as a dog who regains his stolen manhood only when he embraces the Sabbath bride. I see western swing performing a similar function in hardscrabble Texas, turning dirt-poor hired hands into Dapper Dans with magic feet at the Saturday night hoe-down. "

" Even when she was alive, Esther Kreitman's novels, short stories and translations received far less attention than the work of her famous brothers, I. J. and Isaac Bashevis Singer. "

" In 1935, Faber & Faber published an anthology entitled 'My Best Western Story' in which the genre's leading practitioners contributed what they considered their finest. Alas, literature the stories ain't; they appear more like fossils from a spent mine. "

" Deadwood lies at the northern tip of the Black Hills, where the land is ancient and rubbed smooth by time. The Black Hills are more rugged at their southern extremity, where bare granite forms pinnacles and spires. "

" I still see the world as a place of bitter irony and black humour, failed hopes, dashed plans. I hope to make my work sparer, to outgrow my desire to show off. "

" For me, Jews and football go together like a horse and carriage. "

" The summer of 1976 was so hot that bars of chocolate melted on the shelves before confectioners could sell them. "

" One-eyed Reuben 'Rooster' Cogburn is the role that finally delivered John Wayne his Oscar. "

" Hinde Esther Singer was born in Poland on March 31, 1881, the daughter of Bathsheva and Pinchos Mendel Singer. Bathsheva was an intellectual, but both Bathsheva's father and her husband disapproved of erudite women. "

" Santa Cruz is blessed not only with natural wonders, but also with gifted souls who can fashion nature's bounty into man-made treasures. "

" Babies are born bow-legged in South Dakota. By the age of 12, they can purchase guns. At 14, they can take their driving test. Fortunately, since the geographical area of South Dakota can accommodate both France and Germany, but has a population of only 750,000, the chances of hitting anything are pretty slim. "

" Of course the 19th century remained in blissful ignorance of post-modern irony, and the dime novels were made without end. "

" My history was the Western. I grew up with the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid and Bonanza. I felt as much a child of the West as someone born in Montana or Wyoming. "

" I believe that there may well be a personal God out there - not a monotheistic God - that has got it in for me. "

" Tel Aviv is buzzing with so much life, you could bottle it and sell it as honey, and even Jerusalem has a certain fizz. But if you want to see anger, go to Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon. "

" I'm completely lacking any sense of religious belief, but I am superstitious. "

" McCarthy's prose in 'Blood Meridian' comes blazing from the Book of Revelation. "

" Every year in late June, Custer's Last Stand is reenacted on the high plains of Montana. When Custer led out the 7th Cavalry in 2003 - the year I witnessed it - the audience stood and cheered with turbo-charged patriotism. "

" Hinde Esther Kreitman is a forgotten literary foremother, her works largely lost, ignored and out of print. "

" In 1966, I bought my parents a carriage clock for their silver wedding anniversary. It was last wound 30 years later, in December 1996, the month my father died. "

" When I was growing up in north-west London, our milkman's cart was pulled by a horse, and cattle still grazed on the meadows near Church Farm. "

" In the 1880s, a weedy Easterner named Owen Wister had something like a nervous breakdown. Wyoming, with its wide-open spaces and healthy pursuits, was prescribed as a cure. Wister was immediately smitten by the taciturn cowboys and the rules imposed upon them by the cattle barons. "

" I can't go to bed with John Wayne, so I do the next best thing: I go to bed with my girlfriend, who once met the great man. That's how much I love westerns. "

" I went to UC Santa Cruz, overlooking the Bay of Monterey and Santa Cruz, in 1969. Back then, the city was part-hippie, part-surfer, but mostly retired chicken farmer. "

" The idea of the split personality is as old as Genesis. For a start, Eve was manufactured from Adam's rib. Then there's Cain and Abel, twins at war. They were followed by Esau and Jacob, likewise divisible into hairy and smooth types. "

" I owe my discovery of the Hot Club of Cowtown to Kinky Friedman, leader of the Texas Jewboys. When I saw that Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were headlining the 2003 Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, I thought it my duty to check out the band that had inspired the Texas Jewboys. "

" As I was writing, I realised I wasn't sufficiently extrovert to gather enough interesting souls with tall tales around me. I was no Louis Theroux. But neither was I interested in exploring my inner life in public, in the manner of a Jonathan Raban. "