William Lashner > Quotes

“Be careful what you yearn for, because that which you desire most will either complete you or destroy you, and you don't get to choose.”
― William Lashner, Blood And Bone

“Unlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so often I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake.”
― William Lashner, Falls the Shadow

“Life is unbearably perverse; that which we most seek to avoid always becomes unavoidable.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“There I sat, in the wreckage of my apartment, in the wreckage of my life – no love, no prospects, a gnawing sense of existential futility along with the certainty that a better life was being lived by everyone else”
― William Lashner, Marked Man

“We were, all of us, prisoners of our character, unable to alter our true inner natures. When we said we had changed, what had only really changed was our luck. Put us in the same circumstances as our previous folly and suddenly we’d revert, all of us, to what we were. That’s what I believed”
― William Lashner, Marked Man

“My great fear in this life didn't have a name that I knew of. I was afraid of remaining exactly who I was, and that phobia instilled a shiver of fear into every one of my days. Something as simple as a fear of cats would have been a blessing.”
― William Lashner, Bitter Truth

“More than anything in this world, I wish I had been born rich. It would have made up for everything. I'd still be ugly, sure, but I'd be rich and ugly. I'd still be weak and dim and tongue-tied with women, but I'd be rich enough for them not to care. I'd no longer be a social misfit, I'd be eccentric. And most of all, I'd no longer be what I was, I'd be something different.”
― William Lashner, Bitter Truth

“You don't want to hear what I have to say. You only want me to say what you want to hear. But trust me when I tell you that you won't ever get all you want. You'll just grow frustrated and bitter, and you'll end up doing things that will kill the best part of you.”
― William Lashner, Blood And Bone

“There’s a place you can get to. It’s hard to find and it’s easy to fall out of, but there it is, that place. It is the sweetest place you’ve never been and it’s called I Don’t Give a Crap. Book yourself a ticket.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but in his face. —DIOGENES THE CYNIC”
― William Lashner, Bitter Truth

“We were failures, all of us. We told him we had our reasons for the way things had turned out, but he didn't want to hear it. Told us that nothing consumed a man's soul more than the easy excuse.”
― William Lashner, Marked Man

“Instead he lifted up his head and turned his neck so he could catch sight of the man just as he reached the back of the house—a darkly clothed figure with short legs and broad shoulders, his wide back hunched and powerful, running quite quickly despite a slight limp, ripping open the door with massive arms, tearing out into the light, glancing back with a quick twist of his huge neck before jumping like a cheetah over the fence.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“We put the fun in dysfunction.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“The franks came freshly grilled, with long slivers of pickle, hot peppers, and tomato slices, along with onions and that peculiar Chicago relish that is so green, it looks like a traffic light signaling go, eat, enjoy. Oliver splatted mustard on top—no ketchup, thank you—and took a bite. Through the soft bun and garden loaded on top he could feel the casing snap between his teeth and taste the spurt of grease. Suddenly there was no war, no politics, his mother was still alive, his father still knew how to smile, his brother was home from Vietnam, and Ernie Banks was back to playing shortstop at Wrigley Field. Was there anything better in the”
― William Lashner, Freedom Road

“It’s all part of the bartender’s creed: make them fresh, make them cold, but most of all, if they’re a little overeager, make them wait.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“He rages because the people don’t deserve their country and proved it by electing a racist orange glob of hair coughed up by the Russian cat.”
― William Lashner, Freedom Road

“Here’s to being single, drinking doubles, and seeing triple.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“You're no different than the rest of us, Victor. We all see ourselves as this dissatisfied thing, this ego, looking outside ourselves for just that one other thing that will make us complete. That job, that lover, that pot of money. Even enlightenment, as if that too is a thing we can grab hold of to complete what needs completing. There is always something, we believe, that will make us whole. But if you take a finite thing, like body and mind, and look for something outside it to make it complete, something like money or love or faith, what you are seeking is also just a finite thing. So you have a finite thing reaching for the infinite by grabbing for some other finite thing and you end up with nothing more than a deeper sense of dissatisfaction.”
― William Lashner, Bitter Truth

“And I guess what was bothering me the most was that he had blasted away the fiction with which I had justified the weakness in myself that seemed to stay my hand whenever I was finally reaching for the life I so desired. Sure I always had my reasons, failure always does, but underlying the hesitancy was a belief I somehow couldn't shake. We are what we are, we can't transform ourselves, the die is cast and we play out our fates. I might hit upon the million-dollar case, I might stumble upon the love of my life, something hard and clean might fall into my lap and change everything, but it really wouldn't change anything. I'd still be Victor Carl, I'd still be second tier and second class, I'd still be less than I ever hoped to be.”
― William Lashner, Marked Man

“Just then things weren't going so well in my life. My business was precariously perched on the brink of bankruptcy, my anemic love life was the stuff of a Sartre treatise – Being with Nothingness – my car could use a tune-up, my apartment could use a scrubbing, my body could use some exercise, though who would give it that was a mystery to me. I was too young to feel old, and yet there it was, the despair of middle age, hanging around my neck like a noose.”
― William Lashner, Falls the Shadow

“there is nothing so brittle as someone else’s perfection.”
― William Lashner, Bagmen

“Do you do yoga?” she said. “No, but I bend over sometimes to pick up a beer.”
― William Lashner, Falls The Shadow

“Sometimes you only saw yourself clearly in the eyes of those you’ve left, and what you saw was a horror.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“Class divisions as clear as those between Harrington and myself always bring out my best, or at least my most petty.”
― William Lashner, Bitter Truth

“The thing I love about a blue drink is that it isn’t pretending to be anything other than a prissy, made-up concoction for people who can’t drink their whiskey straight. A cocktail with the courage of its lack of conviction.”
― William Lashner, Falls The Shadow

“I received some really bad news. I’m not okay.”
A bolt of terror slashed through me. She had some sort of disease, I could tell. She had cancer. I was sure of it. I had a vision of Carol Kingsly in her hospital bed, her limbs withered, her head shaved, looking up at me with sunken eyes. Gad. Looking up at me with the expectation that I would care for her. Me. Somehow now she was my responsibility? We had only been going out for a couple of weeks, I didn’t even like her all that much, and still I was on the hook? What were the rules on that? And with whom could I lodge my appeal?”
― William Lashner, Falls the Shadow

“It’s not easy, that’s all I can tell you. Living your own life is hard. It’s easier just going along, doing what they tell you to do.”
― William Lashner, Freedom Road

“A feast of smooth oblivion.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“I expect to lose. I always do. And life seems eager to exceed my expectations.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep

“The barkeep sliced a lime in half, squeezed the juice from each half into a jigger, dropped one of the emptied hulls into the glass along with a shot of the juice.”
― William Lashner, The Barkeep