“We catched fish, and talked, and we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed, only a kind of low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.”

“First we talked about girls. Not girls like any of us had ever seen in the flesh, but those girls in magazines with huge tits and puffed-up lips and sleepy eyes, like they'd been fucked hard all night and they were mostly pouting now because the guy finally pulled out. We talked about those girls a lot. And it was all talk.”

“It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.”

“We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened - Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course It could be done.”

“In the wake of my talk with Earl, we had come to a mutual understanding about Lena, the only kind guys ever come to. Meaning, I hadn’t brought it up, and they hadn’t brought it up, and between us, we somehow all agreed to go on like this indefinitely. Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“Our talk had been serious and sober,But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -For we knew not the month was October,And we marked not the night of the year -(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)We noted not the dim lake of Auber -(Though once we had journeyed down here) -Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.”