“Clinton sighed, and gave up. All his life he had given up. He didn't know why it was like that; why a man who wanted nothing but to live honestly and industriously and usefully - who, briefly, asked only the privileges of giving and helping - had had to compromise and surrender at every turn. But that was the way it had been, and that apparently was the way it was to be.”

“He could be breaking apart inside and you'd never know it from the way he acted. He'd be just as pleasant and polite as if he didn't have a care in the world. You had to be careful with someone like that. You could never know what he was thinking.”

“He had never before realized the blessedness of silence - the freedom to be silent, rather, if one chose. He had never realized, somehow, that such blessedness might be his privilege. He was Doc Mc Coy, and Doc Mc Coy was born to the obligation of being one hell of a guy.”

“If we all had what we wanted to eat... We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry.”

“Rothman gave me another sharp look, and then he looked down at his desk. 'Lou' he said softly, 'do you know how many days a year an ironworker works? Do you know what his life expectancy is? Did you ever see an old ironworker? Did you ever stop to figure that there's all kinds of dying, but only one way of being dead?”

“Yeah, Johnnie,’ I said, ‘it’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way. And I’ll tell you why. Because no one, almost no one, sees anything wrong with it. They can’t see that things are screwed up, so they’re not worried about it. What they’re worried about is guys like you.‘They’re worried about guys liking a drink and taking it. Guys getting a piece of tail without paying a preacher for it. Guys who know what makes ’em feel good, and aren’t going to be talked out of the motion … They don’t like you guys, and they crack down on you. And the way it looks to me they’re going to be cracking down harder and harder as time goes on. You ask me why I stick around, knowing the score, and it’s hard to explain. I guess I king of got a foot on both fences, Johnnie. I planted ’em there early and now they’ve taken root, and I can’t move either way and I can’t jump. All I can do is wait until I split. Right down the middle.”

“We're living in a funny world kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard.”