Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven’t the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood - weak blood, diluted - and their memories aren’t worth a goddamned thing.

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

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.

This perhaps was what lay at the root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, 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.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

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.

Come with me into the world and reclaim your independence. You stand to gain so much, and riches are the least of it.