“Is that what you wanted to hear?""No."The man reached over, took hold of the lantern and blew it out. Night enveloped the barn. "Well," he said at last to the darkness between them, "that's when you know it's the truth.”

“People are in the dark, they don't know what to doI had a little lantern, oh but it got blown out too.I'm reaching out my hand. I hope you are too.I just want to be in the dark with you.”

“Scoot over, man. I don't like you that much." "Dick. That's not what you said last night.""Bite me.”

“A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena's growl to be a lion's; but when he hears the lion's growl, he knows damn well it's a lion.”

“There was the bulge and the glitter, and there was the cold grip way down in the stomach as though somebody had laid hold of something in there, in the dark which is you, with a cold hand in a cold rubber glove. It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door and you lean and pick it up, but don't open it yet, not for a second. While you stand there in the hall, with the envelope in your hand, you feel there's an eye on you, a great big eye looking straight at you from miles and dark and through walls and houses and through your coat and vest and hide and sees you huddled up way inside, in the dark which is you, inside yourself, like a clammy, sad little fetus you carry around inside yourself. The eye knows what's in the envelope, and it is watching you to see you when you open it and know, too. But the clammy, sad little fetus which is you way down in the dark which is you too lifts up its sad little face and its eyes are blind, and it shivers cold inside you for it doesn't want to know what is in that envelope. It wants to lie in the dark and not know, and be warm in its not-knowing.”

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”