Rex Pickett > Quotes

“You're such a cheater. The best wood in your golf bag is your pencil!”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“Pinot Noir country. My grape. The one varietal that truly enchants me, both stills and steals my heart with its elusive loveliness and false promises of transcendence. I loved her, and I would continue to follow her siren call until my wallet--or liver, whichever came first--gave out.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“I can't kill myself, I thought. I'm too insignificant. I'm nothing. I'm a thumbprint on the first-floor window of a skyscraper, a smudge of excrement on a tissue surging out to sea along with millions of tons of raw sewage, a squirrel eating a nut as a car bore down on him.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“In Hollywood, between enthusiasm and money lies the Sahara Desert.”
― Rex Pickett

“Wine is so complex, I mused. Thousands of experts and hundreds of thousands of amateur experts would rhapsodize or vilify the vinification of these seemingly simple bunches of grapes. But in the end, it was just these innocuous clusters, photosynthesis, rain or no rain, cool ocean breezes, alluvial soils, that produced these epiphanies in the bottle hundreds and thousands of miles away.”
― Rex Pickett, Vertical: the follow-up to Sideways

“I forced a swift smile, then turned back to my glass, salvation and sanctuary viniferously bundled into one.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“I tapped a forefinger to my temple and raised my glass of single-vineyard Foxen Pinot. "Between here and here lies the Rubicon of the imagination.”
― Rex Pickett, Vertical: the follow-up to Sideways

“Miles, it's only morning and you're already drunk."

"No, I'm not," I weakly protested. "I'm just thirsty.”
― Rex Pickett, Vertical: the follow-up to Sideways

“I snapped to consciousness with the incandescent realization that somewhere, deep in our dreams, or deep in unconsciousness, or deep in the afterlife, all conflicts and acrimonies are resolved. That it was consciousness that so unrelentingly afflicted us with suffering.”
― Rex Pickett, Vertical: the follow-up to Sideways

“In tasting rooms I can never tell how tipsy I am. But once I'm outside, the awareness factor of my inebriation is greatly magnified. Everything looks and feels different. The surrounding flora seems to quiver. Colors are riotously iridescent. Sounds are louder; birds in the trees seem to mock you. All sense of reality is swamped. Anything out of the norm might happen!”
― Rex Pickett, Vertical: the follow-up to Sideways

“Polypharmacology and curmudgeonliness were keeping her alive.”
― Rex Pickett, Vertical: the follow-up to Sideways

“Maya, Indian goddess of illusions. Siren of shipwrecked sailors. If only you lactated Pinot Noir, you’d be perfect.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“We were drinking a memory, one that would be forever associated with the memory of this trip.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“I recall an epic peregrination of some phantasmagorical nature that lay ahead,”
― Rex Pickett, The Archivist

“For a book is a fragile thing. It’s nothing but the spores of plants, blown by wind, until it’s captured on paper. And once it’s on paper, it still must be a book.”
― Rex Pickett, The Archivist: A Thriller

“He had retreated into a silent movie of his own making and I was watching from the anonymous remove of a theater seat. He was flickering, growing distant, fading like the '82 Latour.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“Mr. Happiness is an illusion created by pharmaceutical companies.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“you”
― Rex Pickett, The Archivist

“The Le Montrachet was beyond exquisite. It soared across the palate like an extinct winged creature, tasted of limestone and lichee and licentiousness. Never tasted anything like it before. But a memory. A book can be reread, a movie can be rewatched, but a Le Montrachet passes you by like Halley’s Comet, a once-in-a-lifetime, singular moment only the abstraction of memory, employing the sacred power of words, can grasp onto and keep from evanescing.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways: New Zealand: The Road Back

“This book has the best quote describing the feeling of getting drunk. "I was starting to get drunk now, and I was clinging with my fingertips to the last vestige of decorum. Soon, however, I knew there would come that moment when, without anyone's bidding, I would slip through a crack in the floorboards and find myself rowing across the River Styx with my demon entourage, and not until morning would I fully be able to assess the consequences". Perfect.”
― Rex Pickett

“and fate.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways: New Zealand: The Road Back

“I made a mental note not to give up all hope in humankind.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways

“Palate properly whetted, I spelunked for her clitoris, tasting Bourgogne Rouge and Maya's body.”
― Rex Pickett, Sideways