On the Road Criminality Quotes

The Mexicans looked at our baggage in a desultory way. They weren’t like officials at all. They were lazy and tender. Dean couldn’t stop staring at them. He turned to me.

"See how the cops are in this country. I can’t believe it!" He rubbed his eyes. "I’m dreaming." (IV.4.17, IV.4.19)

"This road," I told him, "is also the route of old American outlaws who used to skip over the border and go down to old Monterrey, so if you’ll look out on that graying desert and picture the ghost of an old Tombstone hellcat making lonely exile gallop into the unknown, you’ll see further..." (IV.5.6)

Occasionally a dim light flashed in town, and this was the sheriff making his rounds with a weak flashlight and mumbling to himself in the jungle night. Then I saw his light jiggling toward us and heard his footfalls coming soft on the mats of sand and vegetation. He stopped and flashed the car. I sat up and looked at him. In a quivering, almost querulous, and extremely tender voice he said,

"Dormiendo?" indicating Dean in the road. I knew this meant "sleep."

"Si, dormiendo."

"Bueno, bueno" he said to himself and with reluctance and sadness turned away and went back to his lonely rounds. Such lovely policemen God hath never wrought in America. No suspicions, no fuss, no bother: he was the guardian of the sleeping town, period. (IV.5.6-IV.5.8)