If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.
The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.
To say goodbye is to die a little.
I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.
Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it.
A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.
I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat...
One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.
I'm killing time and it's dying hard.
His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.
There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.
One would think a writer would be happy here -- if a writer is every happy anywhere.
