““Alf understood this. Everyone had said 'no' to him too, and he had said 'no' to everyone and everything in return. He looked at the peeling paint and splintered wood of the shotgun houses, the rusty iron rails, striped canvas awnings, window bars, sagging roofs, the sickly little trees in their tiny holes in the pavement, the burned-out streetlamps and anonymous scraps of paper growing more soggy in the rain, and his mind said no.””
