"Bah! you got about as much backbone as a jellyfish. Blaming things on a girl."
"You took the backbone out of me, I tell you."
"Oh no, I didn't; it's been missing since your first birthday."
"Eating out my heart and vitals for you and your confounded highfalutin amen notions."
"Before you ever clapped eyes on me you was more famous for your arm muscle than your backbone. I guess I don't remember how your own mother told me the very day before she died how she tried on her old knees to keep you out of a marriage with that woman. All that happened way back in the days when you had your muscles and was head rubber-down at Herschey's. You knew her kind when you did it, and now why ain't you man enough to blame yourself for what you are instead of blaming the girl? Gee!"
"I didn't mean it, Marj. It slipped. S'help me, I didn't. Sometimes I just don't know what I'm saying, Marj; that's how my mind kinda gets sometimes. All fuzzed over like."
"What's the odds what you say, Blink? You're just not man-size, I guess."
She was a bleak little figure bowing into the wind, her tippet flapping back over one shoulder.
"I ain't, ain't I? I 'ain't gone through a living hell sitting on the water-wagon for you, have I?"
"Try to keep from twitching that way, Blink. You give me the horrors."