“Reading hasn’t been the main indoor activity in the US since the 1930s, and yet we pretend there is a steadily increasing interest in books.”

“I suppose this is a good rule: If you want to keep your wife, do not love her too much. She might get bored with you and run away with somebody who gives her a sound beating twice a week to keep her lively.”

“Love is a sharp hollow tooth.”

“You boys listen up, said Grandma Ignatia. You want to learn something? Want to learn how to keep your little peckers hard all your life? Go and go? Live clean like old Napoleon. Liquor makes you quicker and that’s no good. Bread and lard keep you hard!”

“Zack had a Darth Vader, circumcised, and I did too. Cappy’s and Angus’s still had their hoods, so they were Emperors. We argued over whether it was better to be an Emperor or a Darth Vader—which one girls liked better.”

“In another world, maybe Gator Doug would have a nice, normal job where that kind of house and family were possible, but it wasn’t likely, based not on his luck, but on his low tolerance for nice and normal anything.”
Jeffery Hess

Bill James once wrote: “It’s generally not a good thing to have the ERA of a jetliner.”

One of my favorite 2023 releases. Well worth your time.

One more cup of coffee before I go to the valley below.

“California,” he said, “is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she’s on top of the world, not knowing she’s dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.”

“It’s a bit of a burden to be Robin Hood, Jesse James and the Pied Piper. I’d just as soon stay a neighborhood novelty, if it’s all the same to you.”

Today’s brand of baseball is making me long for the days of slop throwers and slap hitters.

“He was a good kid, Steve, even if he did read too much.”

“Now, I hate fighting hopped-up people. They’re crazy. You get crazy enough in a fight without being doped up. You fight some cat who’s been washing down bennies with sneaky pete and they can’t tell if you kill ’em.”

“For a tough kid I had a bad habit of getting attached to people.”

“They had first met as freshmen and while James had initially adhered to his general rule of never trusting a white person with dreads, they soon discovered a mutual love of smoking.”

'Seattle reminded her of men she'd known who'd been told too many times how handsome they were.'

“How easy it was to be a boy. They ate giant, brick-size Rice Krispies treats in the cafeteria with not one thought of calories. They existed in their bodies with no apparent apology.”

“Gravitas is somber; somber is dull; and dull, to Trump, was impotent.”
Jeff Sharlet

The casino just down the road from my house. On my birthday. Hmmmm.