Joe Clifford > Quotes

“This is the part they don’t tell you about in the movies. Or in On the Road. This is not rock ’n’ roll.

You are not William Burroughs, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if Kurt Cobain was slumped over in an alleyway in Seattle the day Bleach came out. There is no junkie chic. This is not Soho and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything—no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself.”
― Joe Clifford, Junkie Love

“Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
― Joe Clifford, Junkie Love: A Story of Recovery and Redemption

“Dinner was nice. Not the meal so much. The only restaurant we could find open on Thanksgiving was Denny’s, and you never walk out of Denny’s saying, That was a good decision.”
― Joe Clifford, Give Up the Dead

“a place where guys got so drunk they puked in their hands just to see how high they could throw it.”
― Joe Clifford, Junkie Love: A Story of Recovery and Redemption

“But it was still a community school. They didn’t have a lacrosse team or colorful mascot.”
― Joe Clifford, Broken Ground

“the bushes no more. I stare up at the looming, lit, downtown skyscrapers, the Transamerica Building, Grace Cathedral and Coit Tower spearing black skies beyond crooked hills, the Bay Bridge’s running lights behind me like an airport landing strip, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate, the roaring Pacific leading to the Great Highway’s abandoned beachheads where the Boys of Belvedere and I used to stay up all night building giant driftwood sculptures and setting them on fire at dawn, dancing like Indians, and I know nowhere I go can compare to this place, because nowhere else can offer me what this city has, standing on 22nd and Mission, two o’clock on some random Sunday afternoon, fat, orange sun splashing, the mango, melon, and papaya peddlers on rolling carts camped beneath the giant Woolworth’s sign, the Mexican panadarias baking empanadas, rich, wheat breads, taquerias stewing al pastor and grilling carne asada, onions and avocado and horchata, greasy spoons carved into alley walls and indie beaneries brewing pungent coffees, the bead and trinket stores with their Jesus and Mary candles for 99 cents, the outlandish drag queen fashions in the Foxy Lady display window,”
― Joe Clifford, Junkie Love: A Story of Recovery and Redemption

“It’s funny, when you spend your whole life in a small town, people who don’t belong stand out like ten-foot aliens belting show tunes.”
― Joe Clifford, Lamentation

“You remember that old cockroach commercial? You check in, but you can't check out."
"I think you mean the Hotel California."
"I hate The Eagles."
"Everyone does, Nicki.”
― Joe Clifford, December Boys