Man cannot live by profit alone.

But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.

People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.

If I could make you stay, I would,’ he shouted. ‘If I had to beat you, chain you, starve you—if I could make you stay, I would.’ He turned back into the room; the wind blew his hair. He shook his finger at me, grotesquely playful. ‘One day, perhaps, you will wish I had.

Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.

Then I buckled up my shoes, and I started.

At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.