I thought, When a man is properly drunk it is as though he is an a room by himself--there is a physical, impenetrable separation between him and his fellows.

I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness.

Where is your mother, Charlie asked. Dead. I’m sorry to hear that Thank you. But she was always dead.

The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.

It is hard to find a friend,' I said. 'It is the hardest thing in this world,' he agreed.

Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?' he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, 'It is a hundred dollars.

We rode along in silence, thinking our private thoughts. Charlie and I had an unspoken agreement not to throw ourselves into speedy travel just after a meal. There were many hardships to our type of life and we took these small comforts as they came; I found they added up to something decent enough to carry on