Matthew

“By the time I reached the coffee-shop door, however, my self-confidence had collapsed. Panic had taken its place. I believed that I was the ugliest, dirtiest little old bum in Manhattan. If I went into the coffee shop everybody would be nauseated. They would throw me out and tell me to go to the Bowery, where I belonged.
But I somehow found the courage to go in anyway - and imagine my surprise! It was a though I had died and gone to heaven! A waitress said to me, "Honeybunch, you sit right own, and I'll bring you your coffee right away." I hadn't said anything to her.
So I did sit down, and everywhere I looked I saw customers of every description being received with love. To the waitress everybody was "honeybunch" and "darling" and "dear". It was like an emergency ward after a great catastrophe. It did not matter what race or class the victims belonged to. They were all given the same miracle drug, which was coffee. The catastrophe in this case, of course, was that the sun had come up again.
I had the feeling that if Frankenstein's monster crashed into the coffee shop through a brick wall, all anybody would say to him was, "You sit down here, Lambchop, and I'll bring your coffee right away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

“I am besieged by such strange thoughts, such dark sensations, such obscure questions, which still crowd my mind - and somehow I have neither the strength nor the desire to resolve them. It is not for me to resolve all this!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“She read my books the way a young cannibal might eat the hearts of brave old enemies. Their magic would become hers.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird

“I was making my mind as blank as possible, you see, since the past was so embarrassing and the future so terrifying.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird