“It’s not something he can do anything about, being a bleeder, anymore than a guy with a glass jaw can do something about not having whiskers.”

“The old white man didn't look into your eyes, he looked clear through your eyes, and straight to the inside of the back of your head. 'Instead of runnin from pain, which is the natural thing in life, in boxing you step to it, get me?”

“Apparently I am pushing a jinx about the streets. I am certain that I can do better with some other wagon. A new cart, a new start. ”

“Always aspire to mediocrity first. If you can do that, you’ll find you’re always moving up in life.”

“And now, I'm thinking again, isn't there something we can do about something we can't do anything about?”

“But I knew the way the people in the town thought about things. They always had some time left over from their life to bother about other people and what they did. They thought they had to get together to help other people out, like the time they got together about the woman who let a colored man borrow her car and told her the best place for her was up north with all the other nigger lovers, and the time they got the veterans with overseas wives out. If you were different from anybody in town, you had to get out. That's why everybody was so much alike. The way they talked, what they did, what they liked, what they hated. If somebody got to hate something and he was the right person, everybody had to hate it too, or people began to hate the ones who didn't hate it. They used to tell us in school to think for yourself, but you couldn't do that in the town. You had to think what your father thought all his life, and that was what everybody thought.”

“You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”