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

I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence.

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

Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.

Hurried business is bad business.

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.

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