On the Road Friendship Quotes

This was not true; I knew better and I could have told them all. I didn’t see any sense in trying it. I longed to go and put my arm around Dean and say, Now look here, all of you, remember just one thing: this guy has his troubles too, and another thing, he never complains and he’s given all of you a damned good time just being himself, and if that isn’t enough for you then send him to the firing squad, that’s apparently what you’re itching to do anyway . . . (III.3.17)

"Ah," I said, "you’re always making cracks about my age. I’m no old f** like that f**, you don’t have to warn me about! my kidneys." We went back to the booth and just as the waitress set down the hot-roast-beef sandwiches - and ordinarily Dean would have leaped to wolf the food at once - I said to cap my anger, "And I don’t want to hear any more of it." And suddenly Dean’s eyes grew tearful and he got up and left his food steaming there and walked out of the restaurant. I wondered if he was just wandering off forever. I didn’t care, - I was so mad - I had nipped momentarily and turned it down on Dean. But the sight of his uneaten food made me sadder than anything in years. I shouldn’t have said that ... he likes to eat so much . . . He’s never left his food like this . . . What the hell. That’s showing him, anyway. (III.6.6)

"You don’t die enough to cry." Every one of these things I said was a knife at myself. Everything I had ever secretly held against my brother was coming out: how ugly I was and what filth I was discovering in the depths of my own impure psychologies.

[...]

"Believe me, Sal, really do believe me if you’ve ever believed anything about me." I knew he was telling the truth and yet I didn’t want to bother with the truth and when I looked up at him I think I was cockeyed from cracked intestinal twistings in my awful belly. Then I knew I was wrong. (III.6.13, III.6.16)