Robert Stone

One wore a brown army-style sweater, extensively darned and full of holes. The darning was old and unraveling; it looked as if someone had once cared enough to repair his sweaters and then just given up.

"Believe only what you know," he said.

"I know that in the United States people are what they choose to be," he said.

"Hey, Cecil," Pablo said, "I want to ask you something, man. Promise you won't get pissed? What do you think is the use of me?"

"De use of you?" Cecil asked, incredulous.

"The use - you know. The use of me."

"Well now . . ." Cecil began. A throb of laughter trembled in his throat. "Dat be hard to say, you know."

"Cecil, I'm the first fucker in the world knows that. But right off ... what would you say the use of me was?"

"De use of you, mon? Same as everbody. Put one foot to front of de other. Match de dolluh wif de day."

"That's all?"

"Sure dat's all. Good times, hard times. Mos' certainly dat's all."

"Don't you think everybody got some special purpose?"

"Hey," Cecil demanded, "what I look like - a preacher, mon? Purpose of you and me to be buried in de ground and das hard enough to do. Be buried in de sweet ground and not in dat ocean." They drank their rum together.

"Dreamin' be de ruin of you, sailor. Be de ruin. Old chap, you too young to be worryin' after dose tings. Be burnin' out your mind."

"It is burning," Pablo said. "Burning out."

"Go to sleep, Pablo. Go upstairs and sleep it off, mon."

"It isn't religion they need down here," Heath declared after five minutes. "They've had plenty of that. It's the pill. If this coast had half the population it has it would be in damn fine shape."

"A little cinder in the wind, Pablo - that's what you are."

"Everybody's worth something," Pablo said. "I mean - everybody's life got some meaning to it. You know - there's a reason for people."

"No kidding? A reason for you? What is it?"

"I don't know," Pablo confessed. "I ain't found out yet. But I know there is one."

"If somebody ever tells you, Geraldine, that they need you, you tell them to buy a dog."

"You goin' to get killed one time, you know that?"

"You don't never get out of this world alive."

It brought him to a latticed gate over which a small, iron Christ stared down in wide-eyed rusty death from the gibbet of a green, oxidised cross.

"What's going on out there," Rheinhardt said, "is there are like a few billion people walking around and every one of them has a head with a lot of stuff going on in it."

"Honey, this town has got just one principal industry where girls is concerned. They can call it what they like but it generally always ends you up in the same position."

"You see," Heath said, "I'm the wrath of God in my tiny way. I don't go seeking out the misguided and the perverse, not at all. Those afflicted find me. I'm the shark on the bottom of the lagoon. You have to sink a damn long way before you get to me. When you do, I'm waiting."