James T. Farrell

“He thought of how when you went out and listened to what people said, you heard all kinds of things, people washing their dirty linen in public, talking about friends and business and,gash, and it made him think how the world must be, at every minute, so full of people fighting, and jazzing, and dying, and working, and losing jobs, and it was a funny world, all right, full of funny people, millions of them. And he was only one out of all these millions of people, and they were all trying to get along, and many of them had gotten farther than he.”

“Life is sad enough without people writing sad books.”

“His face was a gaze of primal obtuseness.”

“He had come to America, haven of peace and liberty, and it, too, was joining the slaughter, fighting for the big capitalists. There was no peace for men, only murder, cruelty, brutality.”

“All his life he had wished and waited, and there had been no change, except for the worse.”

“Life was hard on mothers; but then, they just didn't understand.”

“So long, Lee. Give our regards to the Kaiser. And tell him there's a few boys on 58th Street who'll throw a party for him if he'll drop around.”

“If you let conditions stop you from working, they'll always stop you.”

“America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.”