Moshe Kasher > Quotes

“I told you I was a fucking cowboy.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“There comes a time. The pain of existence transcends the fear of change. There comes a time.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“I was about to bring up David Foster Wallace and that's when I knew we were finished.”
― Moshe Kasher

“Somewhere along the line, I figured out that the more I made people laugh, the less of a loser I would appear to be.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“Though a priest was inspired to teach the deaf in order to bring them to the table of Christian salvation, they ended up building their own table. Because for them, salvation was never a helping hand, but a talking one.”
― Moshe Kasher, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes

“Somewhere around that time I found a well of fear to jump into. I felt so different, I ached.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“Memoirs are inexact things”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“It’s that feeling—the numbing bliss of self-medication—that makes people become drug addicts. Lots of people get high; only some become addicts. It’s not the getting high that makes you an addict”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“I wanted out of those memories. Maybe that’s a kissing cousin of caring.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“I mean, are you going to work your ass off for me? Even when you want to quit again, are you going to stick it out? I need you to tell me you are serious, too.” “I’m serious. I promise.” For the first time since I could remember, I knew my promise meant something.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“That’s the secret no one tells you when you’re a kid. That it feels fucking great. They tell you that you feel loopy and disoriented, but no one tells you that it crawls through your skin, filling in every place of deficit, every gaping crack where your humanity didn’t fuse. The thick warm lava of euphoria fills in the crevices of your psyche, and you realize your soul was an electric blanket that hadn’t been plugged in until just then. Parents and shrinks never tell you that you will forget all the reasons you had to hate yourself. They don’t tell you that shit because then everybody will want to get high.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“A man in the tradition of Lewis and Clark and the decimation of the Native Americans, of the transcontinental railroad and the expulsion of the Chinese who built it, of the Bill of Rights and the slave trade.”
― Moshe Kasher, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes

“My mother would be much more likely to cheer me on if she caught me jerking off, delightedly signing, “It’s natural!” as I came.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“Popov Vodka is so cheap there are potato chunks and miniature Russian peasants floating in it. But it does the trick.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“Once at the mechanic, you find out what the problem is. Busted transmission, engine failure, acute cirrhosis. That knowledge is VITAL. Without it you cannot move forward. But that knowledge doesn’t fix the car. It only makes the fixing of the car possible.”
― Moshe Kasher, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes

“Most people approach systems of belief like a buffet where you take what you want and leave the rest. But, as I used to scream, heavy with judgment, from behind the podium in AA: The part you leave might have been the part that would have saved your life. So I took it all. Until I couldn't take it anymore.”
― Moshe Kasher, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes

“We are impermanent. We die. We immolate. All of us is a person about to catch fire. Before the flames come, we try to live a comfortable life. But with that comfort, it's easy to miss doing much of anything.”
― Moshe Kasher, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes

“That was one of the mightiest medicines of drugs. Their ability to make any crisis, no matter how severe, muted. They never made the problem go away, just the consciousness of that problem disintegrated one grain at a time until all that was left was the moment. It was very Zen.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“past all the people of color (yikes!)”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“The hell I know is better than the hell I imagine.”
― Moshe Kasher, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes

“I was twelve years old and I'd found my calling. Stay high, stay drunk, at all costs.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“It wasn't that I was fat and retarded or crazy, angry, Jewish, or anything else. I just needed to get high. That's the secret no one tells you when you're a kid. That it feels fucking great. They tell you that you feel loopy and disoriented, but no one tells you that it crawls through your skin, filling in every place of deficit, every gaping crack where your humanity didn't fuse. The thick warm lava of euphoria fills in the crevices of your psyche, and you realize your soul was an electric blanket that hadn't been plugged in until just then. Parents and shrinks never tell you that you will forget all the reasons you had to hate yourself. They don't tell you that shit because then everybody will want to get high.”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“It’s that feeling—the numbing bliss of self-medication—that makes people become drug addicts. Lots of people get high; only some become addicts. It’s not the getting high that makes you an addict, it’s what the getting high does for you. If you start low and you get high, you make it up to normal for the first time. Getting loaded feels good; but if it’s the first thing that’s ever felt good in your life, you’re in trouble. That’s what I chased. It wasn’t the high, it was the feeling that I was all right. All right? Getting”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

“Perhaps that's the cycle of things: Someone invents something new and fresh, and it keeps shedding its skin into something slightly different and slightly bigger until, eventually, the inventor cannot identify his creation and a new squad of tinkerers convinces themselves they are, in fact, the masters of the new creature until they also cannot tame the beast.”
― Moshe Kasher, Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes

“I eyed the strangers to see if any of them looked enough like snatch-and-grab kidnappers to take the risk of running toward them, screaming, “Quickly, to your van! Take me, I’m yours!” This”
― Moshe Kasher, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16