Welcome to Arizona, where summer spends the winter — and hell spends the summer. – Popular saying, modified from a booster slogan in the 1930s

It was the farthest she had ever been from home, not only in miles but in feeling. The vastness of the desert frightened her. Everything looked too far away, even the cloudless sky. There was nowhere you could hide in such emptiness. – James Carlos Blake, The Rules of Wolfe: A Border Noir, 2013

[T]he University of Arizona, a very fine school, well liked and spoken of by everybody that knows about it. – Will Rogers (1879–1935) [Go Wildcats! —tεᖇᖇ¡&#

In the desert, I had discovered the West of my imagination, my childhood canyon infinitely magnified. I went there for inspiration and insight. – Julene Bair, The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning, 2014