“If there is work there is warmth, that when a man has freedom of movement it is enough, for then his blood is hot too”

“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”

“A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.”

“Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.”

“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”

“[...] Some parts were totally inappropriate. The corded length of his arms. The broad shoulders and chest that stretched and molded the fabric. The deep bronze of his skin as if he had been lying in the sun for hours. The animal litheness of his movements. He had grown up, and he was no pretty boy. Nick Ryan was all hot-blooded man—and still looked at her as Maggie’s little playmate.”