Important Quotations Explained
1. Guys
like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world.
They got no family. They don't belong no place. . . . With us it
ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that
gives a damn about us. We don't have to sit in no bar room blowin'
in our jack jus' because we got no place else to go. If them other
guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But
not us.
2. “S'pose
they was a carnival or a circus come to town, or a ball game, or
any damn thing.” Old Candy nodded in appreciation of the idea. “We'd
just go to her,” George said. “We wouldn't ask nobody if we could.
Jus' say, 'We'll go to her,' an' we would. Jus' milk the cow and
sling some grain to the chickens an' go to her.”
3. A
guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin' books or thinkin'
or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin', an' he got nothing
to tell him what's so an' what ain't so. Maybe if he sees somethin',
he don't know whether it's right or not. He can't turn to some other
guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can't tell. He got nothing
to measure by. I seen things out here. I wasn't drunk. I don't know
if I was asleep. If some guy was with me, he could tell me I was
asleep, an' then it would be all right. But I jus' don't know.
4. I
seen hundreds of men come by on the road an' on the ranches, with
their bindles on their back an' that same damn thing in their heads
. . . every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his
head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like heaven.
Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out
here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land.
5. A water
snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from
side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the
legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shallows. A silent
head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the
beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically.
