“There is nothing more awkward to look at, said Joejoe, than peasants in suits. They don't fit into them.”

“The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.”

“A doctor may know more than a peasant, but a peasant and a doctor know more together.”

“The 'noble savage' whom the Populists had seen in the simple peasant was, as Gorky now concluded, no more than a romantic illusion. And the more he experienced the everyday life of the peasant, the more he denounced them as savage and barbaric.”

“We had reached the doors to my suite, which still felt awkward to say, even in my own head. My suite. Guys like me don't have suites. We have lairs.”

“Don't step backward toward nothing, step forward toward something, better awkward steps forward, than coward steps backward.”