“You keep out of my bed,” said Danny, for he knew that Joe Portagee had come to stay. The way he sat in a chair and crossed his knees had an appearance of permanence.”

“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.”

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

“Tiny emerged on deck some hours later, shaken but smiling. He said that what he had been considering love had turned out to be simple flatulence. He said he wished all his romantic problems could be solved as easily.”

“Crooks stood up from his bunk and faced her. "I had enough," he said coldly. "You got no rights comin' in a colored man's room. You got no rights messing around in here at all. Now you jus' get out, an' get out quick. If you don't, I'm gonna ast the boss not to ever let you come in the barn no more."She turned on him in scorn. "Listen, Nigger," she said. "You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?"Crooks stared helplessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself.She closed on him. "You know what I could do?"Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. "Yes, ma'am.""Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny."Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego--nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, "Yes, ma'am," and his voice was toneless.For a moment she stood over him as though waiting for him to move so that she could whip at him again; but Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in. She turned at last to the other two.”

“The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness.”

“The ways of sin are curious . . . I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had, inside and out, he'd manage to hide a few little sins somewhere for his own discomfort. They're the last things we'll give up.”