I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn't think of any real good reason. There isn't any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the motives behind violence and challenges the justification for fighting.
In this quote from S.E. Hinton, the author explores the different reasons that people, particularly young men, might engage in fights. While some do so for fun, hatred, pride, or conformity, the speaker is introspective, questioning the true purpose behind their own involvement in violence and concluding that fighting may only be justifiable in self-defense, which prompts a deeper consideration of morality and personal values.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about conflict resolution in schools.
Your mother is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made the perfect knight in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.
Sometimes, I feel like I spent the first part of my life wishing to be a teen-age boy, and the second part condemned to being one.
That's why people don't ever think to blame the Socs and are always ready to jump on us. We look hoody and they look decent. It could be just the other way around - half of the hoods I know are pretty decent guys underneath all that grease, and from what I've heard, a lot of Socs are just cold-blooded mean - but people usually go by looks.
Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.
Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.
...but I've never regretted it. You can't regret experience.
This little separate self must die. Then we shall find that we are in the Real, and that Real is God, and He is our own true nature, and He is always in us and with us. Let us live in Him and stand in Him. It is the only joyful state of existence. Life on the plane of the Spirit is the only life, and let us all try to attain to this realization.
Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion.
Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.
When selflessness is seen in objects, the seed of cyclic existence is destroyed.
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
Each one of us sees Jesus in a different way. To some, He was prophet, for they needed to know the kingdom was at hand. But most of all, He was the son of God, and He came to experience the consequences of the curse the Father had put upon mankind when Adam and Eve disobeyed.
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