“Sammy, wouldnt you like to add up to something? In the future? Amount to something?Naw. I just figure to roll on, stackin days, you know, till the day I fuck up big enough the future gets canceled....”

“I had been born shoved to the margins of the world, sure, but I had volunteered for the pits.”

“I slept for over a full day, as you know, but I wont say I rested.”

“I FELL DEEP down in there, until this bright light raised me from sleep. Coming out of a pit such as that, you think the bright light could be God or a cop on patrol.”

“I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.”

“The greater self-confidence an individual possesses, the less inclined he is to put down others. This says a lot about those who constantly belittle.”

“Respect is the art of reciprocal. You can never earn respect by belittling and stepping over the people around you.”

“Though people are laughing at the dirt surrounding you, they are missing to see the seeds also planted, growing silently within.”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”