Of Mice and Men - Key Quotations

"both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders. The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp strong features... behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face with large pale eyes, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws." - page19

"Curley's like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys...Kind of like he's mad at 'em because he ain't a big guy." - page48

"Married two weeks and got the eye?" - page49

"Slim don't need to wear no high heeled boots on a grain team" - page50

"She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters, like sausages. She wore a cotton house dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers" - page53

"I never seen no piece of ********* worse than her." - page54

"He moved with a majesty only achieved by royalty and master craftsmen. He was the jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch" - page55

"Curley's wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the planning and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face" - page129

"The silence fell on the room again. It came out of the night and invaded the room" - page75

"Ranch with a bunch a guys on it ain't no place for a girl, specially like her" - page78

"Over each bunk there was nailed and apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk. And these shelves were loaded with little articles, soap and talcum powder, razors and those Western magazines ranch men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe" -page38

"Crooks, the ***** stable buck, had his bunk in the harness room; a little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn" - page98

"And scattered about the floor were a number of personal possessions; for, being alone, Crooks could leave his things about, and being a stable buck and a cripple, he was more permenant than the other men, and he had accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back" -page98

"...Someday - we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs and..." - page32

"Got in the finals for the Golden Gloves. He got the newspaper clippings about it" - page81

"We'd just live there. We'd belong there. There wouldn't be no more runnin' around the country and gettin' fed by a *** cook" -page85

"This thing they had never really believed in was coming true" - page87

"They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn one of 'em's got a piece of land in his head. An' ever a God damn one of 'em ever gets it" -page106

"Coulda been in the movies, an' had nice clothes..." - page125

"Now Candy spoke his greatest fear. 'You an' me can get that little place, can't we George?" -page131

"George said softly, '-I think i knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we'd never do her" - page131

"Lennie's closed hand slowly obeyed" - page23

"I could get along so easy and so nice if I didnt have you on my tail. I could live so easy and maybe have a girl" - page24

"Slowly, like a terrier who doesn't want to bring its ball back to its master, Lennie approached" - page26

"He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. "Guys like us, that work on ranches are the lonliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place..."With us it aint like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us...' ...'But not us! An' why? Because...because i got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why" -page31-32

"Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy..." -page43