How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #22
We were telling these things and both sweating. We had completely forgotten the people up front who had begun to wonder what was going on in the back seat. At one point the driver said, "For God’s sakes, you’re rocking the boat back there." Actually we were; the car was swaying as Dean and I both swayed to the rhythm and the IT of our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives. (III.5.4)
Part of Dean’s appeal for Sal is his holiness; the two understand each other not only "on other levels of madness," but also on a level of spirituality.
Quote #23
The holy con-man began to eat. (III.6.17)
Again, Sal connects two seemingly inconsistent traits in Dean: holiness and criminality.
Quote #24
"Don’t worry, man, I know what I’m doing." I began to flinch. Dean came up on lines of cars like the Angel of Terror. He almost rammed them along as he looked for an opening. He teased their bumpers, he eased and pushed and craned around to see the curve, then the huge car leaped to his touch and passed, and always by a hair we made it back to our side as other lines filed by in the opposite direction and I shuddered. I couldn’t take it any more. (III.9.14)
Sal seems to emphasize Dean’s holiness at his greatest moments of intensity – intense driving, intense drug use, and intense madness or music.