“You ever get ill at ease? said Rawlins.About what?I dont know. About anything. Just ill at ease.Sometimes. If you're someplace you aint supposed to be I guess you'd be ill at ease. Should be anyways.Well suppose you were ill at ease and didnt know why. Would that mean that you might be someplace you wasnt supposed to be and didnt know it?”

“If I think about what I wanted as a kid and what I want now they aint the same thing. I guess what I wanted wasnt what I wanted. . . .Hell, I dont know what I want. Never did. . . . When you're a kid you have these notions about how things are goin to be. You get a little older and you pull back some on that. I tink you wind up just tryin to minimize the pain.”

“If I didnt have her I dont know what I would have. Well, yes I do. You wouldnt need a box to put it in, neither.”

“When you’re a kid you have these notions about how things are goin to be, Billy said. You get a little older and you pull back some on that. I think you just wind up tryin to minimize the pain. Anyway this country aint the same. Nor anything in it. The war changed everthing. I dont think people even know it yet.”

“He woke whimpering in the night and the man held him. Shh, he said. Shh. It's okay.I had a bad dream.I know.Should I tell you what it was?If you want to.I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner but nobody had wound it up and it was really scary.Okay.It was a lot scarier in the dream.I know. Dreams can be really scary.Why did I have that scary dream?I dont know. But it's okay now. I'm going to put some wood on the fire. You go to sleep.The boy didnt answer. Then he said: The winder wasnt turning.”

“I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said.I know you didn't.I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of.I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. Yessir.”

“Ive seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away.”