- Sarah Gibbs: A man runs from trouble and finds trouble right around the corner for him. It's hard for a man to do field work when he's known better. Used to drag home nights with his hands cracked open to the blood. When the boy come sick, he'd take him up in his arms as gentle as any woman could. He loved the boy, just like a man loves to poke his head up and smell the sun.
- Sarah Gibbs: [about her mule that Paladin has put down for her] That don't matter to him none now. Neither good nor bad. No sun to burn him, no wind to shiver him. Never again. But a poor man, it's different. It oughta be different. When a man comes to his end, he oughta be buried, buried proper, words said over him, no matter what he was born to.
- Paladin: Harden, it's no crime to accept help from your friends when you need it. But I'll tell you something, I think that accident was the luckiest thing that ever happened to you. And I'll tell the whole world that I don't think you were much of a man before the accident because you aren't much of a man now. And the only excuse you've got is a sprung leg.
- Deputy Jim Harden: Now hold on, you ain't got no call to talk to me like.
- Paladin: Harden! You tell me one thing! You think you're the only human being in this whole world that ever had to fight hardship?
- [First lines]
- Paladin: Pardon their dead and you've had your day of venegance. Now you want Sarah Gibbs for a headstone to her husband's grave. Is that what you want?