I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moo… - John Steinbeck

But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him.

[Cannery Row's] 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.

She was a very small girl with a face as lovely and fresh as her son’s face — a very small girl. Most of the time she knew she was smarter and prettier than anyone else. But now and then a lonely fear would fall upon her so that she seemed surrounded by a tree-tall forest of enemies. Then every thought and word and look was aimed to hurt her, and she had no place to run and no place to hide. And she would cry in panic because there was no escape and no sanctuary.

Then one day she was reading a book — brown, with a silver title, and the cloth was broken and the boards thick. It was Alice in Wonderland. But it was the bottle which said, “Drink me” that had changed her life.