“I've given you everything a friend can give, Joe Saul-even contempt, and that's the hardest thing of all.”

“It was not a safe thing to lead Joe into temptation; he had no resistance to it at all.”

“I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

“Names are a great mystery. I've never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this- whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong.”

“Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.”

“What branch do you want to go in?” “I don’ give a god-damn,” said Pilon jauntily. “I guess we need men like you in the infantry.” And Pilon was written so. He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. “Where do you want to go?” “I want to go home,” Big Joe said miserably. The sergeant put him in the infantry too.”

“But you can't start over, Only a baby can start over. You and me, Why, we're all that's been.”