A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed. Remember this thing. I have known boys forty years old because there was no need for a man.

[Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.

Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.

The last clear definite function of men—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.

He never fell, never slipped back, never flew.

The misery stayed, not thought about but aching away, and sometimes I would have to ask myself, Why do I ache? Men can get used to anything, but it takes time.

It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from chrysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever.