...she stayed behind in the vestibule of the train, leaning against the wall in an effort to knit together her nerves before she faced the others. (C… - Leane Zugsmith

The rush of cold air and the buzz of voices woke Pop from his doze. "What's that, what's that?" he said testily, leaning forward in the Morris chair that he would not let Joanna sell. (first lines of "King Lear in Evansville")

Throughout the afternoon, the woman's voice had been seldom heard. With her pale clean hands curved around the rolled papers on her lap, she sat on a folding chair beside the dusty filing cabinets. More frequently than she spoke, she uttered a succession of dry sounds, clearing her throat. Behind the desk, the red-haired man in shirt sleeves, with tie and collar loosened, was reading aloud in a voice that matched his imperturbable expression. He looked up from his letters only when the man sitting on the window sill interrupted him with an explosive comment. (first lines)

he thought: this is it. I heard about it; read about it; now I am seeing it. For us, perhaps, there may be only the threat of the men outside. For the others, the threat has become the act. The sequence is manifest, he thought: first, the handful of deputies, next, the organized band of vigilantes, and, finally, the uniformed army of storm troopers. As it happened in Italy, as it happened in Germany, as it is happening in Spain. Now I have had the unclean thing flung into my face. Did I love my own land so much that I thought it could remain undefiled? Did the signs before me in my part of the country appear so faint that I hoped they could easily be washed away? Very well. Now I know; and never will forget and never will stop fighting it. They won't let us have our way of salvation, will they? The corners of his jaw muscles bulged out. While we try to bring it about through love and cooperation, they crush us. They are the law-breakers. They don't give a hang for man-made laws. They never heard of our Father's law that we live together as His children. They use their money and their power, he thought, to degrade other men, like those poor hirelings riding outside, bought by the pro-consuls of the steel and textile corporations. I say that they are making monsters of one set of men in order to crush another set of men. Laws will not stop them, now I know, or reform them, since they admit no laws. We must stop them. Submission won't stop them, he told himself; that's what they want. Jesus didn't teach submission; He taught a morality of initiative. Jesus would have known at once that their violence can be defeated only by action. Very well. Now I know. (Chapter 13, p241)