'I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't.' I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I cain't.

'Your name is John Coffey.' 'Yes, sir, boss, like the drink only not spelled the same way.'

'He kill them with they love', John said. 'They love for each other. You see how it was?' I nodded, incapable of speech. He smiled. The tears were flowing agai…

He looked like he could have snapped the chains that held him as easily as you might snap the ribbons on a Christmas present, but when you looked in his face, …

A sense of utter loneliness-loneliness inevitable, crushing, eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the infinite void of unconsciousness-enfolded…

Loneliness feels like prison.

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.