Stephen King, The Long Walk

"Thinking, Garraty thought. That’s the day’s business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn’t matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you’re alone."

"Better to be dirty than dead."

"It's like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, ‘what the hell did I want to jump over this stupid bar for?"

"They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn't like to look at them. They were the walking dead."

"I don't want to see it anymore. It's lousy. And it's a cheat. You build it all around something... set yourself on something... and then you don't want it. Isn't it too bad the great truths are all such lies?"

"But there are weak men who can lift cars if their wives are pinned underneath. The brain, Garraty." Mc Vries's voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. "It isn’t man or God. It’s something...in the brain."

"Garraty wondered how it would be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind your gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death. How would that be? Just how would that be?"

"Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddam Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think... when I get tired enough... I think I'll just sit down"

"They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?"