I’m gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why folks walk in the grass, gonna hear ‘em talk, gonna hear ‘em sing. Gonna listen to kids eatin’ mush. Gonna hear husban’ an’ wife a-poundin’ the mattress in the night. Gonna eat with ‘em an’ learn. Gonna lay in the grass, open an’ honest with anybody that’ll have me. Gonna cuss an’ swear an’ hear the poetry of folks talkin’. All that’s holy, all that’s what I didn’t understan’. All them things is good things.
There seemed to be no cure for loneliness save only being alone.
Books ain’t no good. A guy needs somebody – to be near him.” He whined, “A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.
They were fed and clothed and taken care of until they were too old, and then they were kicked out. This ending was no deterrent. No one who is young is ever going to be old.
Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.
If every single man and woman, child and baby, acts and conducts itself in a known pattern and breaks no walls and differs with no one and experiments in no way and is not sick and does not endanger the ease and peace of mind or steady unbroken flow of the town, then that unit can disappear and never be heard of.
That is a great mystery,” said Doctor Winter. “That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world – how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.
Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head.
That’s what makes it ours-being born on it, working on it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.
I ain’t sleepin’. I got too much to puzzle with.
Maybe his wealth was entirely in unpaid bills.
Dora was having trouble with her income tax, for she was entangled in that curious enigma which said the business was illegal and then taxed her for it.
I ain’t gonna try to teach ‘em nothin’. I’m gonna try to learn.
Some people exude their futures, good or bad.
Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?
Perhaps that might be the way to write this book – to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.
There was no desire in him for a state or condition, no picture in his mind of the thing to be when he had followed his longing; but only a burning and a will overpowering to journey outward and outward after the earliest risen star.
It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
Yeah,” said George. “I’ll come. But listen, Curley. The poor bastard’s nuts. Don’t shoot ‘im. He di’n’t know what he was doin’.
Liza had a finely developed sense of sin Idleness was a sin, and card playing, which was a kind of idleness to her. She was suspicious of fun whether it involved dancing or singing or even laughter. She felt that people having a good time were wide open to the devil. And this was a shame, for Samuel was a laughing man, but I guess Samuel was wide open to the devil. His wife protected him whenever she could.