Chapter 1

The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose. (George) Chapter 1

Behind him [George] walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely. (Lennie) Chapter 1

‘O.K.- O.K. I’ll tell ya again. I ain’t got nothing to do. Might jus’ as well spen’ all my time tellin’ you things and then you forget ’em, and I tell you again.’ (George to Lennie) Chapter 1

‘I could pet it with my thumb while we walked along,’ said Lennie. (to George about the dead mouse) Chapter 1

‘…You jus’ stand there and don’t say nothing. If he finds out what a crazy bastard you are, we won’t get no job, but if he sees ya work before he hears ya talk, we’re set. Ya got that?’ (George to Lennie about the new boss) Chapter 1

‘God, you’re a lot of trouble,’ said George. ‘I could get along so easy and so nice if I didn’t have you on my tail. I could live so easy and maybe have a girl.’ (to Lenny) Chapter 1

George looked quickly and searchingly at him. ‘I been mean, ain’t I?’ (to Lenny) Chapter 1

George said, ‘I want you to stay with me, Lennie. Jesus Christ, somebody’d shoot you for a coyote if you was by yourself. No, you stay with me …’ (George) Chapter 1

‘Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. … With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.’ (George to Lennie) Chapter 1

‘… because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you …’ (Lennie to George) Chapter 1

‘An’ live off the fatta the lan’,’ Lennie shouted. Chapter 1

‘Look, Lennie. I want you to look around here. You can remember this place, can’t you? The ranch is about a quarter mile up that way. Just follow the river?’ (about the deep pool that features at the start and end of the text) Chapter 1

Chapter 2

‘The boss gives him hell when he’s mad. But the stable buck don’t give a damn about that. He reads a lot. Got books in his room.’ (Candy about Crooks) Chapter 2

On his head was a soiled brown Stetson hat, and he wore high-heeled boots and spurs to prove he was not a laboring man. (the Boss) Chapter 2

‘All right. But don’t try to put nothing over, ’cause you can’t get away with nothing. I seen wise guys before.’ (the boss to George and Lennie) Chapter 2

‘Yeah. I had ’im ever since he was a pup. God, he was a good sheep dog when he was younger.’ (Candy’s sheepdog) Chapter 2

‘Curley’s like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he’s mad at ’em because he ain’t a big guy.’ (Candy to George) Chapter 2

‘Well, he better watch out for Lennie. Lennie ain’t no fighter, but Lennie’s strong and quick, and Lennie don’t know no rules.’ (George to Candy about Curley) Chapter 2

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. (Curley’s wife) Chapter 2

‘Well, you keep away from her, ’cause she’s a rattrap if I ever seen one.’ (George to Lennie about Curley’s wife) Chapter 2

He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders. He was capable of killing a fly on the wheeler’s butt with a bull whip without touching the mule. (Slim) Chapter 2

There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love. (Slim) Chapter 2

Chapter 3

‘Maybe he ain’t bright, but I never seen such a worker.’ (Slim about Lennie, to George) Chapter 3

‘Jus’ tell Lennie what to do an’ he’ll do it if it don’t take no figuring. He can’t think of nothing to do himself, but he sure can take orders.’ (George to Slim) Chapter 3

‘He’s a nice fella,’ said Slim. ‘Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus’ works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella.’ (Slim to George about Lennie) Chapter 3

‘I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain’t no good. They don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time.’
‘Yeah, they get mean,’ Slim agreed. ‘They get so they don’t want to talk to nobody.’ (George to Slim) Chapter 3

‘He ain’t mean,’ said Slim. ‘I can tell a mean guy a mile off.’ (to George about Lennie) Chapter 3

George said, ‘You get right up an’ take this pup back to the nest. He’s gotta sleep with his mother. You want to kill him? Just born last night an’ you take him out of the nest. You take him back or I’ll tell Slim not to let you have him.’ (to Lennie) Chapter 3

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘He’s jes’ like kid, ain’t he.’ (Slim to George about Lennie) Chapter 3

‘Bill and me worked in that patch of field peas. Run cultivators, both of us. Bill was a hell of a nice fella.’ (Whit) Chapter 3

‘Ranch with a bunch of guys on it ain’t no place for a girl, specially like her.’ (George to Whit about Curley’s wife) Chapter 3

‘Sure,’ said George. ‘All kin’s a vegetables in the garden, and if we want a little whisky we can sell a few eggs or something, or some milk. We’d jus’ live there. We’d belong there. There wouldn’t be no more runnin’ round the country and gettin’ fed by a Jap cook. No, sir, we’d have our own place where we belonged and not sleep in no bunt house.’ (George to Lennie about their dream farm) Chapter 3

‘You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn’t no good to himself nor nobody else. When they can me here I wisht somebody’d shoot me. But they won’t do nothing like that. I won’t have no place to go, an’ I can’t get no more jobs.’ (Candy to George) Chapter 3

Slim said, ‘Well, you been askin’ me too often. I’m gettin’ God damn sick of it. If you can’t look after your own God damn wife, what you expect me to do about it? You lay offa me.’ (when Curley asks if he’s seen his wife) Chapter 3

Carlson laughed. ‘You God damn punk,’ he said. ‘You tried to throw a scare into Slim, an’ you couldn’t make it stick. Slim throwed a scare inta you. You’re yella as a frog belly. I don’t care if you’re the best welter in the country. You come for me, an’ I’ll kick your God damn head off.’ (Carlson to Curley) Chapter 3

‘I didn’t want no trouble’ … (Lennie, after hurting Curley) Chapter 3

‘I can still tend the rabbits, George?’ (Lennie to George) Chapter 3

Chapter 4

This room was swept and fairly neat, for Crooks was a proud, aloof man. He kept his distance and demanded that other people keep theirs. Chapter 4

He whined, ‘A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,’ he cried, ‘I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.’ (Crooks to Lennie) Chapter 4

‘I seen hunderds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads. Hunderds of them. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ’em ever gets it.’ (Crooks to Lennie) Chapter 4

‘Come on in. If ever’body’s comin’ in, you might just as well.’ It was difficult for Crooks to conceal his pleasure with anger. (Crooks to Candy) Chapter 4

‘Everybody wants a little bit of land, not much. Jus’ som’thin’ that was his. Som’thin’ he could live on and there couldn’t nobody throw him off of it.’ (Candy to Crooks) Chapter 4

‘They left all the weak ones here’ … (Curley’s wife to Lennie, Candy and Crooks) Chapter 4

And while she went through the barn, the halter chains rattled, and some horses snorted and some stamped their feet. Chapter 4

‘Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.’ (Curley’s wife to Crooks) Chapter 4

… Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in. (Crooks’ response to being racially vilified by Curley’s wife) Chapter 4

Candy was crestfallen. ‘Didn’t tell nobody but Crooks.’ (Candy to George) Chapter 4

Chapter 5

‘Why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so little as mice.’ (Lennie to the dead puppy) Chapter 5

‘I get lonely,’ she said. ‘You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How’d you like not to talk to anybody?’ (Curley’s wife to Lennie) Chapter 5

‘Seems like they ain’t none of them cares how I gotta live. I tell you I ain’t used to livin’ like this. I coulda made somethin’ of myself.’ (Curley to Lennie) Chapter 5

‘I like to pet nice things …’ (Lennie to Curley’s wife) Chapter 5

And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young. (Curley’s wife, dead) Chapter 5

George said softly, ‘I think I knowed from the very first I think I knowed we’d never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would.’ (George to Candy about the dream of buying the farm) Chapter 5

‘… An’ s’pose they lock him up an’ strap him down and put him in a cage. That ain’t no good, George.’ (Slim to George) Chapter 5

‘I’ll come. But listen, Curley. The poor bastard’s nuts. Don’t shoot ‘im. He di’n’t know what he was doin’.’ (George) Chapter 5

Chapter 6

‘You . . . . an’ me. Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more trouble. Nobody gon-na hurt nobody nor steal from ’em.’ (George to Lennie, as he prepares to shoot him) Chapter 6

Slim said, ‘You hadda, George. I swear you had-da. Come on with me.’ (after George shoots Lennie) Chapter 6

Curley and Carlson looked after them. And Carlson said, ‘Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin’ them two guys?’ (about Slim and George) Chapter 6