"Readers seeking to identify the fictional people and places here described would do better to inspect their own communities and search their own hearts, for this book is about a large part of America today."
John Steinbeck, in the Author's Foreward

"Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared. I'm scared." Chap. 1, p. 14

"Sometimes a man seems to reverse himself so you would say, 'he can't do that. It's out of character'. Maybe it's not. It could just be another angle, or it might be that the pressures above or below have changed his shape. You see it in war a lot - a coward turning a hero and a brave man crashing in flames." Chap. 6, p. 87

"What was happening could be described as a great ship...