Clergyman's

One from the Heart for..., the great director who taught me to feel the color, see the sound, and hear the unsaid in such great films as LaStrada, LaDolceVita, and 81/2.
- Max Evans (author)

When I was still a teenager, I acquired a small, well-watered ranch in northeastern New Mexico. It was located fourteen miles east of the village of Des Moines—which I would later call ""Hi-Lo"" in my many writings and a major film. ...In those poor struggling days, coyote hides would bring from five to fifteen dollars—a ton of money at the time.
- Max Evans (author)

The beast of war belches and passes almost endless odors. There is the acrid smell of freshly detonated gunpowder and burnt steel. There is the sweet scent of newly freed blood misting above the dead, dying, and mutilated bodies, little red streams forming pools that begin to turn brownish as they seep into the bruised earth. There is a special combined smell when a shell penetrates, explodes, and sets fire to a tank—a mixture of steel, powder, human flesh, bone, and blood, gasoline and oil, clothing, and stained and torn family photos.
There is the unforgettable stench of bodies long past the first discovery of flies. This is a forever odor. So is the scent of villages, towns, and cities burning.
- Max Evans (author)

We called them wrecks... And the great mystery in the sky does not allow you to have all that fun unless you have some wrecks.
- Max Evans (author)

I left the heart of the Hi-Lo country, and went to Taos. I bought some sub-irrigated land and a house and moved there amongst the founders and old masters of the famed art colony. I also obtained my first Taos horse, Brownie. ...for the thiry dollars I paid Horse Thief Shorty for him, he turned out to be quite a buy. ...Brownie was pretty darn good at everyting, outstanding at none, but a loyal friend all the way. A partner. ...I rank him pretty high for that priceless underrated loyalty. ...I would ride him for pure pleasure. We would move across the great sagebrush desert on top of the west mesa where the Indians held their annual, ancient horseback rabbit hunt.
- Max Evans (author)

I was amazed to discover my award-winning racehorse story, ""Showdown at Hollywood Park,"" was a short sequel to the famed ""Seabiscuit"" story.
Also I had two more, over 90 percent true, stories that I slightly fictionalized... ""My Pardner"" was one of these. ...... loved ""My Pardner."" He optioned it many times over. ...I traded him ""My Pardner"" for so I could get a Martin Scorsese,' film made. ...This book brought about the very last conversation I ever had with Peckinpah—two weeks before his untimely death. He was on his way to... and pressed for time, but promised that on his return he would sign all film rights for ""My Pardner"" back to me. But... he died, and it never happened.
- Max Evans (author)

One from the Heart for... Those deeply loved and influential amigos and amigas who have gone on the ""Long Adios"", including my mother, Hazel, who taught me to read, and love it, before I started school. Wiley Hittson, whose brief life of daring courage, total loyalty and sudden shocking death by gunfire inspired my novel TheHighLoCountry. Luz Martinez, the ""Santero"" who followed me to Taos and carved cedarwood into permanent beauty and dignity. Woody Crumbo, the great pioneer Pottawatomie Indian artist, who became my artistic and spiritual mentor and whose spirit is in every chapter of this book. And finally, our little dog Foxy...
- Max Evans (author)

One from the Heart for... My wife Pat, my number one critic, who also suffered safely through all those long decades of my taking notes, thinking and figuring on Bluefeather Fellini, and then the five and a half years of actually writing it down. ...Also, much appreciation for the painting you created for the cover.
- Max Evans (author)

Jim Ed Love is a very funny name for a man who likes nothing better than to see a cowboy get what little he's got get kicked out by a rawboned, walleyed, bucking, ground-stopping bronc.
- Max Evans (author)

Several times, Emilio had taken Ty to the mountains to fish for trout. ...The gurgling, forever-twisting little snowmelts coursing, playing, singing over millions of differently shaped stones deeply fascinated a young man from the dry, flat plains of Lea County. It was a gift of beauty sparkling in the sunlight to out glimmer all the diamonds in the world. ...He would have wagered on it. Emilio had introduced him to a ceaseless wonder. ...and the fishing was almost as exciting. He could never stop marveling that these small streams could be home to foot-long brown and rainbow trout.
- Max Evans (author)