Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals. - John Steinbeck

"I ain't sayin' I'm like Jesus," the preacher went on. "But I got tired like Him, an' I got mixed up like Him, an' I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin' stuff. Nighttime I'd lay on my back an' look up at the stars; morning I'd set an' watch the sun come up; midday I'd look out from a hill at the rollin' dry country; evenin' I'd foller the sun down. Sometimes I'd pray like I always done. On'y I couldn' figure out what I was prayin' to or for. There was the hills, an' there was me, an' we wasn't separate no more. We was one thing. An' that one thing was holy...An' I got thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'. I got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, and' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' and draggin' and fightin'. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they're all workin' together, no one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang — that's right, that's holy. An' then I got to thinkin' I don't even know what I mean by holy...I can't say no grace like I use' ta say. I'm glad of the holiness of breakfast. I'm glad there's love here. That's all."

Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.

When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror