“Well, it had been a good many years since I had thought myself very lovable, and I escaped to some degree this trap of shattered ego. I was lucky; I had found a village of people so poor and simple, so engaging, that I had been more interested in my feelings for them than in what they thought of me. And frankly, after eighteen years of farming in the Sacramento Valley, that terrible life-consuming rat race, I was desperate enough to accept almost any human relationship on almost any terms. Love is love, I decided. Just take it and don't analyze it away. "You're my friend; you're good; you give me pennies," some nameless kid from down the beach told me. My God, what is love in this whorehouse world of poverty? And was I shocked because I could buy love or because I could buy it with pennies?”