A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Of course you always had that detached quality as if you were playing a game without much concern over whether you won or lost, and now that you've lost the game, not lost but just quit playing, you have that rare sort of charm that usually only happens in very old or hopelessly sick people, the charm of the defeated.

What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your fingers, until your fingers are broken?

What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? - I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can.

How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I done time enough, haven't I served my term? can't I apply for a-pardon?

The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

When things don’t change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them.