Coffeehouse Quotes

“Live. How many of us need to be reminded that living has nothing to do with trying to be as good as someone else, or trying to fit into some category, or filling in the blanks on some stupid checklist. That it has nothing to do with punishing yourself for past mistakes.”
― Suzanne Selfors, Coffeehouse Angel

“To forgive is to set someone free.”
― Suzanne Selfors

“Sitting there, in the coffee house, I saw so many stories behind the lips of people who had left them untold.”
― Lidia Longorio, Hey Humanity

“Insomniacs should not be forced to exist in a realm with reflective glass. From the first look I’m boxed in a prism, rainbows charming the other dark-circled self into sharing my prison. One eye turns on the other, each accusing the other of being responsible for an appearance oddly elfin, before exiting head and bouncing like lottery balls through the mirror walls and then drifting up and out the open and unguarded Well of the Wyrd. There, everyone with mirrors and mushrooms is waiting for me, faded and dissolved into giggles.”
― Amanda Sledz, Psychopomp Volume One: Cracked Plate

“Monday ushers in a particularly impressive clientele of red-eyed people properly pressed into dry-cleaned suits in neutral tones. They leave their equally well-buttoned children idling in SUVs while dashing to grab double-Americanos and foamy sweet lattes, before click-clacking hasty escapes in ass-sculpting heels and polished loafers with bowl-shaped haircuts that age every face to 40. My imagination speed evolves their unfortunate offspring from car seat-strapped oxygen-starved fast-blooming locusts, to the knuckle-drag harried downtown troglodytes they’ll inevitably become. One by one I capture their flat-formed heads between index finger and thumb for a little crush-crush-crushing, ever aware that if I’m lucky one day their charitable contributions will fund my frown-faced found art project to baffle someone’s hallway.”
― Amanda Sledz, Psychopomp Volume One: Cracked Plate

“Ölüm yaklaştığı zaman, dünya zevkleri çürür.”
― Naguib Mahfouz

“Strictures and prohibitions availed nothing. The fatwas, the talk, made no impression on the people. One coffeehouse was opened after another, and men would gather together, with great eagerness and enthusiasm, to drink coffee... such things do not admit of a perpetual ban.”
― Kâtip Çelebi

“Without much ado, Ginsberg, along with Orlovsky and Fakir, arrived one Sunday at the Coffee House looking for Bengali poets. The cafe was abuzz with writers, editors and journalists. Each group had a different table—some had joined two or more tables and brought together different conversations on one plate. But somehow, everyone seemed to have an inchoate understanding of the business of war and what it spelled out for them in the end.”
― Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury, The Hungryalists

“Coffee is the toffee that fuels our thoughts.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“The Coffeehouse Troubadour by Stewart Stafford

I am The Coffeehouse Troubadour;
Catchpenny conduit of all your pain,
Nanosecond glance, a collective boil lanced,
And my mirror refracts again.

You mix my words in bitterest cups,
Laced to an addictive latte brew,
Read the room as we slowly dance
And see, it's not about me, it's about you.

Did you catch the trick I pulled there?
Would you like me to show you once more?
Or put on your coat in silent meditation?
A rainy baptism as you walk through the door?

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford