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

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.

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

Why were you feeling low? Why does anyone? It creeps up on you from time to time.

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

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

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.