John Steinbeck

They're getting money together so they can go out west. They're going to buy a car and go out west where it's easy living. There's nothing here."

fumbled at the knots

not blunder out of a woodlot and come on her by accident.

made him angry and he fell into threats.

set her arm, taped her ribs, and sewed up her scalp.

Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts—the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.

And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.

And still the box is not full.

You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

It took her two weeks to write her last letter with revisions and corrected spelling. In it she confessed to crimes she could not possibly have committed and admitted faults far beyond her capacity. And then, dressed in a secretly made shroud, she went out on a moonlight night and drowned herself in a pond so shallow that she had to get down on her knees in the mud and hold her head under water. This required great will power. As the warm unconsciousness finally crept over her, she was thinking with some irritation of how her white lawn shroud would have mud down the front when they pulled her out in the morning. And it did.

At the very first he knew he was lying, but it was not long before he was equally sure that every one of his stories was true.

The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck.