“By this time all the guys figured Jose was crazy. But they also figured he was kind of smart crazy. When he told tall stories about his native Porto Rico the guys paid more attention to him figuring that since his story about the girl was true there might be a fifty-fifty chance that his stories about Porto Rico were also true. Jose was a very funny guy but then the bakery was full of funny guys and it was just as well not to question them too closely. You took them as they came and said nothing.”

“They all got interested then because everybody at the bakery wanted a better job only none of them ever found one. ‘Where did you get this better job, Jose’? ‘In a studio, of course’, said Jose. ‘That is why I came to California. Didn’t I tell you I came to find work in the studios?’
Nobody said anything. They just stared at Jose. From anybody else this would have seemed more bull but from Jose they knew it was the truth. How did you like that? As far as the guys at the bakery were concerned the studios might just as well be in China as in Hollywood. They paid good dough but nobody except an uncle or maybe a nephew could crack them. Yet Jose just as calm as a cucumber had walked into one and got what he wanted.
‘How did you get this job, Jose?’
‘I asked for it,’ said Jose.”



“Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god I’m glad I’m dead because death is always better than dishonor? Did they say I’m glad I died to make the world safe for Democracy?”

“Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can’t talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn’t know what death is.”

Exerts from the novel "JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN", by DALTON TRUMBO