Clifford D. Simak

"But the bars that held you, the bars that kept you in were the luxury and soft living. It is hard to walk out on a thing like that."

"The whole procedure of his thinking, Jason knew, was an imbecilic exercise; there was no compelling reason for him to seek an answer. And yet his mind bored on and on and he could not stop it, hanging with desperation to an impossibility to which it never should have paid attention."