Dallas Winston
Quote 1
"I was crazy, you know that, kid? Crazy for wantin' Johnny to stay out of trouble, for not wantin' him to get hard. If he'd been like me he'd never have been in this mess." (9.106)
Dallas, an extremely isolated character, suggests that jail helped make him "hard" and that this hardness, while isolating, protects him. He might be saying that if Johnny were "hard" he wouldn't have jumped into a burning building, and wouldn't now be dying.