Rand Nix

“Chris told us one day we were all out of touch; we didn’t really know and understand Black Crowes fans. “I have a feeling I’m more in touch with them than you are, as you live in the Hollywood Hills and you spend more on weed than most people make in a year,” I replied. “That’s not fucking true.” “How much do you spend on weed in a year?” “I don’t know, a hundred grand?”
― Steve Gorman, Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes--A Memoir

“Trees, thirty feet tall and black now, are planted in strict order along the avenues and main boulevards leading into and out of downtown. None of them bloom or grow anymore and some have fallen over, tumbling part way, leaning to the side, their massive roots exposed, black now too, and as I walk I touch my hand against each tree. The trunks are smooth, almost slick, as if they’ve been varnished and preserved. It’s a vision of a quiet Armageddon, or an emptied wasteland following a chemical attack. But this is only the wasteland of abuse and inattention.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“There is, among us sitting on the stage and among the people in the South End who have forgotten about this place and among even the people living here, including the few of them sitting in this room, there is not just an absence of money. There is an absence of will. Desire. Need. And without those things,” she says, sitting forward, “this place will not ever change. Accept that. Because without it, this is how life here will always be.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“Have some faith in your government,” Barnes told her. “We march stupidly into countries we don’t understand; we sit back as our cities are decimated by natural disasters; and we let our schools go quietly to shit—despite these things, one thing we’re pretty good at is finding people who don’t want to be found.”
― Olen Steinhauer, The Middleman