Here we are being hard and relentlessly dazzling in spite of whatever shit. We are saying to each other If you have an affliction, any remorse or anguish, eat it, drink it, snort it, fuck it, use it, suck it, kill it.

Accept that shit is fucked up and roll with it...Don't bitch. Just adapt. Nothing is going to go right and everything is going to be hard.

I burn my neck with a fondue skewer while you watch The Cosby Show on my bed.

This is the thing about the service industry, you can get trained to be slick and hospitable in any situation and it serves you well the rest of your life. Once you figure out that everything is performance and you bow to that, learn to modulate, you can dissociate from the mothership of yourself like an astronaut floating in space.

Ralph's first bar was in Arizona during World War II. He ran a place just outside the entrance to Fort Huachuca, a U.S. Army base where only black soldiers were stationed. 'Coloreds' served in separate units then.

Ralph never used computers. Everything was in his head, and business didn't seem to suffer a bit from it.