Sweet Thursday Quotes
"When the war came to Monterey and to Cannery Row everybody fought it more or less, in one way or another."
"The canneries themselves fought the war by getting the limit taken off fish and catching them all."
"Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone."
"There's a gold mine in every man's soul and you can be rich or poor according to how much or how little you dig out."
"It's a tough town. All organized. Don't work the street. The authorities won't have it."
"A stranger getting off the Del Monte Express in Monterey wouldn't be aware that his arrival was noted."
"Pacific Grove sprang full blown from the iron heart of a psycho-ideo-legal religion."
"The more appetites a man has, the richer he is, but I was taught not to steal."
"Looking back, you can usually find the moment of the birth of a new era, whereas, when it happened, it was one day hooked on to the tail of another."
"I’d just as soon talk about it if I knew what it was."
"The doctrine of our time is that man can’t get along without a whole hell of a lot of stuff."
"You may not be preaching it, but you’re living treason."
"I never knew anyone who devoted more loving thought to minusculae."
"A allergy is, you get sick when there’s something you don’t want to do."
"There’s three good reasons for marrying a hustler."
"Maybe you’ve stopped a bunch of nonsense. Perhaps you’ve nipped a fool in the bud."
"You got to learn it like you learn anything else—just practice."
"Don’t pretend to be something you ain’t, and don’t make like you know something you don’t, or sooner or later you’ll fall on your ass."
"The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you."
"You got to remember you’re Suzy and you ain’t nobody else but Suzy."
"Suzy is a good thing—a real valuable thing—and there ain’t nothing like it in the world."
"Only way she can find out is if she sees it, reads it, or asks it."
"Best way in the whole world to defend yourself is to keep your dukes down!"
"Don’t fight nobody unless there ain’t no other way."
"Thing people like most in the world is to give you something and have you like it and need it."
"Every instinct tells me to stay out of this, and every impulse makes me want to get into it."
"You can only fight Fate so far, and when you give in to it you’re very strong; because all of your force flows in one direction."
"Everything I touch withers like the sere and yellow leaf."
"Mother, make my bed soon, for I’m sick to the death and I fain would lie down."
"You are the well—the original well. A man can give you his deepest secrets. You don’t hear or remember. And if you did, it wouldn’t make any difference because you don’t pay attention."
"He is about to pay a formal call on a girl in a boiler. He has a half-pound box of chocolates for her. This man is scared stiff."
"I, who admire it so, didn’t even recognize it when I saw it. Old Bach had his talent and his family and his friends. Everyone has something. And what has Suzy got? Absolutely nothing in the world but guts."
"I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her."
"I love candy bars. I stole only one at a time and eased my conscience of a little crime. But yesterday an appetite like a whip overcame me. I stole three."
"There ain’t no such guy. It’s hypa—it’s malarky, a kind of a riddle."
"Hazel baby, I can’t do her. I don’t care if the stars or even the cops say I got to, I can’t do her. I ain’t got the poop."
"Vice is a monster so frightful of mien, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings."