Donald O'Donovan > Quotes

“My grandfather was a railroad brakeman, sixty years with the D&H. I'd sit on his lap when I was little, I remember, at the upstairs apartment on Watkins Avenue in Oneonta overlooking the tracks, and we'd look out at the yard together and watch the trains hooking up, and he'd pull his gold watch out of his vest pocket and squint at the dial, a gold pocket watch, and the bulging surface of the watch case was all scritch-scratched, etched with tiny soft lines, hundreds of tiny scratches, interlaced. And then he'd check the yard, my Grandpa, to see if the trains were running on time. In those days there was a rhythm to everything, there was an order to things, but now we're riding a runaway train that's carrying us all away to that final night where nothing is remembered and nothing matters.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Now we’re riding a runaway train that’s carrying us all away to that final night where nothing is remembered and nothing matters.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“I’m living the life of an urban hunter-gatherer—again.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Here comes the train; there goes the pain!”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“And when Prohibition came along, Dr. Sharpe’s Shakti Tonic took off like a rocket, mostly due to its hefty eighteen percent alcohol content.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Nowhere do you see a real, integrated, full-blooded man or woman who shines like a beacon in this sea of disjointedness.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Cops need criminals, doctors need disease, and saints need lepers.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Birth, copulation, death. You come out of one hole and you end up in another one. It’s a pretty short trip.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“I was born under that star, the dung-beetle star.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“I found myself thinking about Jacqueline, my second or third wife.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Your lifelong rebellion against all forms of authority stems from the infant’s desire to murder the father and possess the mother.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Compassion goes out looking for suffering, scouring the earth for poverty and misery and pain, the same way the cops look for criminals.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“I love LA! The freeways, the cars, the smog, the glitter, the glitz, the sleaze, the prostitutes, the poison that falls from the sky.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“The enemy never sleeps!”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“I’m back at Lafayette Park after a trip to the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, not to look at the books but to rub up against the female bookworms and to catch a buzz on the free herbal tea.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Like the dung beetle, I had my comfortable burrow and my ball of sustenance, and like the dung beetle I was happy.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Meditation doesn’t lead to enlightenment because in meditation the ego is trying to destroy the ego.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Having a job is like having a lobotomy.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“It’s been my experience in life that if you step back and simply allow events to take their course, things will usually work out okay. Or they won’t.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“I’m nothing more than a talking urinal cake. The world is pissing on me.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Dear God, please make me believe that life has some sort of meaning and purpose.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Los Angeles, this anthill, this slag heap, the city where I suffered and grappled with life and was defeated, and where I finally triumphed.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“The neon dust falls slowly, filtering through the stone canyons, settling on hats and fire hydrants, collecting on delicatessen awnings, filling the shopping carts and rickety baby carriages of the rag pickers with soft powdery snow.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“You came out kicking and screaming, reluctant as hell to leave, and you spent the rest of your life trying to get back in.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“Los Angeles is a mother that devours her children.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“They needed someone to hate, a tangible focus for their remorse and disappointment, and I’d been elected, the projection of their own inner hell.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train

“We are all refugees, and we have the scar to prove it.”
― Donald O'Donovan, Night Train