How we cite our quotes:
Quote #1
"Solitary, half mad, his eyes redrimmed as if locked in cages with hot wires" (2.4).
When the kid spends a night with an old hermit, he can tell that years of isolation in the desert have made the old man half-crazy. After all, how could you expect someone to stay sane alone in the desert, with all that sun and dust and general sense of lawlessness?
Quote #2
"Toadvine was running down the street, waving his fists above his head crazily and laughing" (1.114).
It's pretty clear that many of the men in this book have a true love for destroying stuff. In this scene, Toadvine burns down a hotel and runs through the streets laughing like a crazy person. The kid looks at all of this and thinks, "Yeah, this is a dude I want to hang out with." Talk about love at first sight.
Quote #3
"Sproule was clawing at his neck and he was gibbering hysterically and when he saw the kid standing there looking down at him he held out to him his bloodied hands as if in accusation and then clapped them to his ears and cried out what it seemed he himself would not hear" (5.128).
Sproule has been through enough punishment to drive anyone mad. After an attack by some Apaches, he's been left with a severely infected arm out in the middle of the desert (and this is long before the days of effective and easily accessible antibiotics). And if that weren't bad enough, a vampire bat attacks him while he's sleeping, which sounds like a one-way ticket to a rabies infection. It seems as though the whole world is against the guy, and he can't take it anymore.