It requires self-esteem to receive-not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

He had said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man; she could not live without a man.

The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

No one knows my ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time.

A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.