Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.

If we could keep Curley in, we might. But Curley’s gonna want to shoot ’im. Curley’s still mad about his hand. An’ s’pose they lock him up an’ strap him down and put him in a cage. That ain’t no good, George.

All the time he coulda had such a good time if it wasn’t for you. He woulda took his pay an’ raised hell in a whore house, and he coulda set in a pool room an’ played snooker. But he got to take care of you.

"If I was alone I could live so easy." His voice was monotonous, had no emphasis. "I could get a job an’ not have no mess."

Slowly, like a terrier who doesn’t want to bring a ball to its master, Lennie approached, drew back, approached again.

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.

You’d drink out of a gutter if you was thirsty.

Hide in the brush till I come for you.

There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle–up near water.

The bunk house was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted.