Sometimes you will need to be understood; what you never show to anyone will need companionship. And then you must come to me. - Willa Cather

You can’t tell me anything about family life. I’ve had plenty to last me.’ ‘But it’s not all like that,’ I objected. ‘Near enough. It’s all being under somebody’s thumb.

Now everything was in ruins. The air was still and cold like the air in a refrigerating-room. What I felt was fear; I was afraid to look or speak or move. Everything about me seemed evil. When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.

He's made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar that he buttons on outside his coat. They ain't got but one overcoat among 'em over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful scared of cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers.