A sailor without his own ship was like a hermit crab without a shell.

You can’t just plain die. You got to do it by the book.

Being dead is being weak and walled off.

My early book learning came to me as naturally as the seasons in … the little town in which I grew up. … Quite early I began to find a special charm in an unpeopled world … of lava rock and sagebrush desert. … I was often more purely happy at such times than I think I have ever been since.

You can't just plain die. You got to do it by the book.

The way to get killed around machinery was to take things for granted.

Each man of us is living his own personal work of art, and cannot evade artistic responsibility for his product.

That's how it struck me, first day or two in isolation. I'd looked around for old shipmates, like a guy does, but didn't see any.

I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.

He was thinking it must be tough to be a woman. They were all needs and wants and wishes and the only real trade they had was going to bed.