"[She] thinks any word or gesture that does not smack od brickyard brawn and brutality is a word or gesture of weak dandyism."
"It's like an old clock that won't tell time but won't stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old, worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing."
"As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that."
"There's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered."
"His face is out to me like the face of a beggar, needing so much more'n anybody can give."
"You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open."
"Just like she was above him, and sex, and everything else that's weak and of the flesh."
"There'd be my face in the mirror...and I'd think, That ain't me, that ain't my face. I wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don't seem like I ever been me."
"I was seeing him different than when he first came in; I was seeing more to him than just big hands and red sideburns and a broken-nosed grin. I'd see him do things that didn't fit with his face or hands, things like painting a picture ... or like writing letters to somebody in a beautiful flowing hand. How could a man who looked like him paint pictures or write letters to people or he upset and worried like I saw him once when he got a letter back?"
"He hadn't let what he looked like run his life one way or another."
"You don't have to apologize for my noi nadequacies, my friend. It neither fits your character nor complements mine."
"I wanted to reach over and touch the place where he was tattooed, to see if he was still alive. He's lying awful quiet, I told myself, I got to touch him to see if he still alive... That's a lie. I know he's still alive. That ain't the reason I want to touch him. I want to touch him because he's a man. That's a lie too. There's other men around. I could touch them I want to talk to him because I'm one of those queers! But that's a lie too. That's one fear hiding behind another. If I was one of those queers I want to do other things with him. I just want to touch him because he's who he is."
"Perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become."
"You have to laugh at the things that hurt you to keep yourself in balance."
"An expression that was allowed only because he figured it'd be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn't enough time left for something he had to do..."
"His relaxed, good-natured voice doled out his life for us to live, a rollicking past full of kid fun and drinking buddies and loving women and barroom battles over meager honors - for all of us to dream ourselves into."
"[He was] growing almost into a legend. A man out of sight can't be made to look weak."
"Her shoulders and breasts and hips were too wide and her grin too big and open for her to ever be called beautiful, but she was pretty and she was healthy."
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