“I sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Money comes and goes.’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter and you know it doesn’t.”

“I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.”

“Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?' he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, 'It is a hundred dollars.”

“i don't suppose I have a choice.''As with so many things in a life, brother, I don't suppose you do.”

“This perhaps was what lay at the root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.”

“I will admit he is unusual, but that is perhaps the closest I could come to complimenting him.”

“I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself.”