Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fences, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our own hidden water? It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

..it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.

I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.

The quality of owning freezes you forever in "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? You only truly, deeply appreciate and are grateful for something when you compare and contrast it to something worse.

There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp.

Yes, you should talk," he said. "Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth.