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“It’s always easier getting into trouble than it is getting out.”
“Life is pain . . . unless you beat it to the punch.”
“So when you decide to do something, anything, you have to wonder what frame of mind brought you to that decision. More times than not it will be a part of your mind that you hadn’t considered.”
bad news skims over the surface while good deeds sink to the bottom.”
“When you hit your fifties life starts comin’ up on ya fast,”
Life is a test, and the final grade is always an F.
The wonderful thing about knowing you won’t die of old age is that you can enjoy the wrong things in life without trepidation or guilt.
There’s a special timbre to the truth coming out of one’s mouth. If you mix that in with the lies it helps lubricate the dialogue.
AMERICANS BELIEVE IN STRAIGHT lines. They think that all you have to do is get out there and get the job done, one step after the other. If you don’t do that then you’re either lazy or incompetent. American men especially, and more and more women all the time, seem to think that life is like a mission. That’s how they approach sports and war and sex—even love. That’s what they think about when somebody’s credit goes bad or there’s an accident on the road: somebody veered off the straight and narrow. Years of orphanages and foster homes, uneducated teachers and corrupt officials, from crossing
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People who work within systems can avoid their own shortcomings because they are surrounded by people who are just as flawed.
it’s not what’s in the book but just the fact that somebody reads that builds up the mind,
These prisoners were silent and for the most part motionless. They had been defeated by a system so vast and unresponsive, so utterly powerful, that only suicide could counter the weight of it.
I’d tried to save my victim, but sometimes trying is the best you can do.
The best and worst lies are when we lie to ourselves.
Any chance you get to risk your life for the cause is as close to a blessing as a modern man can come.
even though you about as crooked as one’a them curly bamboo plants, I figure even they grow toward the sun.”
“New York’s like a boiling cauldron,” I said, only dimly understanding why. “We are all consumed therein.”
“Nothing wrong with fear. It keeps the eyes open and your feet ready to run.”
“No one is so important that somebody else can’t take his place,”
