Mayfield said, "You asked what I was thinking. Well, I will tell you. I was thinking that a man like myself, after suffering such a blow as you men have struck on this day, has two distinct paths he might travel in his life. He might walk out into the world with a wounded heart, intent on sharing his mad hatred with every person he passes; or, he might start out anew with an empty heart, and he should take care to fill it up with only proud things from then on, so as to nourish his desolate mind-set and cultivate something positive or new.

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

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

You put a wage behind something, it gives the act a sort of respectability.

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

I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself.

Luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.