Donald O'Donovan Quotes

I'm living the life of an urban hunter-gatherer - again.

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.

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.

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.

I'm nothing more than a talking urinal cake. The world is pissing on me.

Los Angeles, this anthill, this slag heap, the city where I suffered and grappled with life and was defeated, and where I finally triumphed.

Los Angeles is a mother that devours her children.

Dear God, please make me believe that life has some sort of meaning and purpose.

And when Prohibition came along, Dr. Sharpe's Shakti Tonic took off like a rocket, mostly due to its hefty eighteen percent alcohol content.

You came out kicking and screaming, reluctant as hell to leave, and you spent the rest of your life trying to get back in.

We are all refugees, and we have the scar to prove it.

Cops need criminals, doctors need disease, and saints need lepers.

Nowhere do you see a real, integrated, full-blooded man or woman who shines like a beacon in this sea of disjointedness.

The enemy never sleeps!

Birth, copulation, death. You come out of one hole and you end up in another one. It's a pretty short trip.