no Joads or no Hazletts, neither, ever refusin’ food an’ shelter or a lift on the road to anybody that asked. They’s been mean Joads, but never that mean.’’

But, goddamn it, Al, don’ keep ya guard up when nobody ain’t sparrin’ with ya. You gonna be all right.

There’s some way to stop this. It’s not like lightning or earthquakes. We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change.’’

“Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin’ man can talk the murder right out of his mouth an’

The bitterness we sold to the junk man—he got it all right, but we have it still.

“Like a damn ol’ graveyard ghos’. I been goin’ aroun’ the places where stuff happened. Like there’s a place over by our forty; in a gully they’s a bush. Fust time I ever laid with a girl was there. Me fourteen an’ stampin’ an’ jerkin’ an’ snortin’ like a buck deer, randy as a billy-goat. So I went there an’ I laid down on the groun’, an’ I seen it

A fella builds his own sins right up from the groun

The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

where my own pa’s blood is part of it.’’ He paused uneasily. “You fellas think I’m touched?’’