The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Drum
I did not want to read this book and would have never picked it up had it not been selected by a book club I admire and sometimes attend. After the first 50 pages, I was still baffled by their selection and without the encouragement of a friend I would have put it down without reading another page. She promised me that if I would just persevere, I would enjoy it. Yeah, right! Well, she was right.
In the end, I had more highlights in this book than in any novel I had read in many years.
Some of my favorites:
"It is only the ignorant who can be positive, only the ignorant who can become fanatics, for the more I learned the more I became aware that there are shadings and relationships in all things."
" . . . all things are timeless, and whatever lies before is only a page in what lies before that and before that."
"There is no cause worth dying for that is not better served by living."
" . . . a problem clearly defined is already half solved . . . "
