Key Quotes and Analysis

“Stay Gold Ponyboy…. Stay Gold”

– Johnny Cade

These are Johnny’s last words to Ponyboy and are a testament to their friendship. Johnny admired Ponyboy’s sensitivity even though Greasers were expected to be unemotional. These words are Johnny’s reminder to Ponyboy to stay sensitive and tender and not let the world around him harden him.

“Let’s walk to the park and back. Then maybe I’ll be cooled off enough to go home.”

“OK,” Johnny said easily. “OK.”

Things gotta get better, I figured. They couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.”

_Ponyboy and Johnny

These words spoken by Ponyboy and foretell the disaster that is going to fall upon the group. This gives us an idea that the book is being written in an anecdotal model by the protagonist, Ponyboy. This quote documents the moment after which the lives of many of the characters of the story drastically change.

“You get hardened in jail. I don’t want that to happen to you like it happened to me…”

_Dally

Dally says this to Johnny after Johnny insists that they ride back to Tulsa to confess their crime. While Johnny thinks Dally is mean and dishonest, his only intention is to save Johnny from leading the kind of life he has led. Dally knows the hardships of prison life and wishes to rescue Johnny from that.

“I had never given Bob much thought—I hadn’t had time to think. But that day I wondered about him. What was he like? … I looked at Bob’s picture and I could begin to see the person we had killed. A reckless, hot-tempered boy, cocky and scared stiff at the same time.”

–Ponyboy

“We’re all we have left. We ought to be able to stick together against everything. If we don’t have each other, we don’t have anything. If you don’t have anything, you end up like Dallas…and I don’t mean dead, either. I mean like he was before. And that’s worse than dead. Please—he wiped his eyes on his arm—don’t fight anymore.”

–Sodapop

“We won,” Dally panted. “We beat the Socs. We stomped them—chased them outa our territory.”

Johnny didn’t even try to grin at him. “Useless…fighting’s no good…”

–Dally and Johnny

“Soda fought for fun, 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.”

–Ponyboy

“You would have saved those kids if you had been there,” I said. “You’d have saved them the same as we did.”

–Ponyboy

“You know what a Greaser is?” Bob asked. “White trash with long hair.”…

–Bob

“It wasn’t fair for the Socs to have everything. We were as good as they were; it wasn’t our fault we were Greasers…I felt the tension growing inside of me and I knew something had to happen or I would explode.”

–Ponyboy

“That way you could tell the other guy was human, too.”

–Ponyboy

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”

–Ponyboy