Oddfellows Cafe Quotes

You're serious."
"As serious as an accountant at an IRS audit."
His face closed off, reminding her of the ruthlessness she had first noticed about him on the front steps. "You have no business opening a restaurant."
"Says who?"
"Says the guy who watched you try to extricate yourself from a burger suit with a knife."
Her mouth fell open. "Burger suits and restaurants are two different kettles of fish."
"Kettles of fish? Now there's great business terminology."
"Yep, Texas style."
"You're in New York, sweetheart."
"I am not your sweetheart, thank my lucky stars."
"Another of your quaint Texas sayings? What was the last one I heard you use? 'Bless your heart'?"
She sliced him a tooth-grinding smile. "While you might not like them, you can bet your backside that a cafe that serves the kind of fare we create in Texas would have people lined up around the corner. Or, as we say in Texas, till the cows come home. ~ Linda Francis Lee

The man sitting across from me at the cafe was thinking about murdering his wife.
He imagined stabbing her and pretending like it was a robbery. Or perhaps, he thought, he'd take her hiking, push her off a cliff and say it was an accident; that she'd slipped. I wanted to tell him it wouldn't work, that in those CSI shows on T.V. they always suspected the husband first. ~ Lori Brighton

In that instant, your billboard careened ashore on a wall of water, cracking the back of my head. I reached for balance and touched what I thought was a puppy. Then you grabbed my finger. My God, I thought. It's a baby. I fainted dead away. That's how Macon found us the next day - me unconscious on half a billboard, you nestled in my arms, nursing on the pocket of my uniform. The half billboard said: " ... Cafe ... Proprietor." Our path seemed clear.
I will always love your mother for letting you go, Soldier, and I will always love you for holding on.
Love, the Colonel.
PS: I apologize for naming you Moses. I didn't know you were a girl until it was too late. ~ Sheila Turnage

Travel Tip: Relax. It's not a crime to want to sit in a cafe and not take a walking our of all those historic monuments in your peripheral vision. ~ Vivian Swift

But we must take other steps, such as increasing conservation, developing an ethanol industry, and increasing CAFE standards if we are to make our country safer by cutting our reliance on foreign oil. ~ Jim Costa

When I lived in the city, I had learned to close my door against a lot of the noise, but when I open my door here, I'm not opening into the possibility that I'm going to run into somebody or be faced with a hundred choices about what I'm going to do, or which cafe I'm going to go to, or which way to distract myself. ~ Dani Shapiro

With the heady scent of yeast in the air, it quickly becomes clear that Langer's hasn't changed at all. The black-and-white-checked linoleum floor, the tin ceiling, the heavy brass cash register, all still here. The curved-front glass cases with their wood counter, filled with the same offerings: the butter cookies of various shapes and toppings, four kinds of rugelach, mandel bread, black-and-white cookies, and brilliant-yellow smiley face cookies. Cupcakes, chocolate or vanilla, with either chocolate or vanilla frosting piled on thick. Brownies, with or without nuts. Cheesecake squares. Coconut macaroons. Four kinds of Danish. The foil loaf pans of the bread pudding made from the day-old challahs. And on the glass shelves behind the counter, the breads. Challahs, round with raisins and braided either plain or with sesame. Rye, with and without caraway seeds. Onion kuchen, sort of strange almost-pizza-like bread that my dad loves, and the smaller, puffier onion rolls that I prefer. Cloverleaf rolls. Babkas. The wood-topped cafe tables with their white chairs, still filled with the little gossipy ladies from the neighborhood, who come in for their mandel bread and rugelach, for their Friday challah and Sunday babka, and take a moment to share a Danish or apple dumpling and brag about grandchildren. ~ Stacey Ballis

I considered myself very lucky after 'Baghdad Cafe,' and I have 'The Shield.' In every genre, I've kicked butt at some point. I'm real happy. ~ C. C. H. Pounder

At times one wanders, doubting the facts, even when one has discovered the secrets of the good life. To be sure, my solution is not the ideal.
But when you don't like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you don't have any choice, do you? What can one do to become
another?Impossible. One would have to cease being anyone, forget oneself for someone else, at least once.But how? Don't bear down too hard on me.
I am like that old beggar who wouldn't let go of my hand one day on a cafe terrace: Oh, sir,he said, its not just that I am no good, but you lose
track of the light.Yes, we have lost track of the light, the mornings, the holy innocence of those who forgive themselves. ~ Albert Camus

She probably gave up and started playing Minesweeper."
[ ... ]
We reached the cafe and found Sydney bent over her laptop, with a barely eaten Danish and what was probably her fourth cup of coffee. We slid into seats beside her.
"How's it - hey! You ARE playing Minesweeper! ~ Richelle Mead

Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be apprehended through the free movement of a transcendence; the spirit with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill; but if a thousand fine bonds tie it to the earth, its surge is broken. The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. "Her wings are clipped." At eighteen, T.E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure...Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief...[The girl] may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of i ~ Simone De Beauvoir

In the mid-1980s, on a spring Sunday morning, a Volvo stationwagon parked in Brunswick Street. A young couple got out. She was trim, blonded, tanned. He was already broadening in the midsection, sockless, short and hairy legs ending in boatshoes. From a restraining chair in the back seat, he unloaded a child, complaining, flailing. They took it into a cafe.

They were going to have brunch.

The old Brunswick Street was dead, Brunchwick Street born. There was no turning back. ~ Peter Temple

The dream of a writer is to be surprised by his characters. All of a sudden, they are living their own lives; they are not prisoners anymore ... Tati taught me how to observe, how to sit in a cafe in Paris and to look at the passersby and to guess what their story is, even a little moment of their story ... ~ Jean-Claude Carriere

After he graduated from college, he went to Paris and became an Existentialist. He had a photograph taken of Existentialism and himself sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Pard was wearing a beard and he looked as if he had a huge soul, with barely enough room in his body to contain it. ~ Richard Brautigan

I wrote 'Millie's Cafe' driving out of Ft. Worth, Texas one time. I was in a dust storm in my old bus. Beer inside. It was like a sailboat, you know ... we couldn't see anything. Some things about Texas are so different than Ontario. I was just thinking about how different it is from where I live and, you know, whatever happens to inspire a song happened. ~ Fred Eaglesmith

'Bagdad Cafe' was a film that changed many, many people's lives ... how they saw themselves and how they looked at their life situation. I thought I made a little movie. All the mail that I get is about how it changed lives, and that's wonderful. ~ C. C. H. Pounder

You don't experience life by drinking coffee fast. You experience life by savoring every last drop. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

I watched him walk back to the cafe holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led him quite a life. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom. ~ Thomas Harris

From "Lunchtime At The Justice Cafe" :

The waitress snarled a grin that lasted just long enough to show a mouthful of stained yellowed teeth, then turned suddenly serious. "'Course I'm not the one to talk about these folks, I 'spose. You see, I used to do a bit of eavesdroppin' in my day before the sheriff put a stop to that." 

She lifted the stringy blond hair from the side of her face, the opposite side from where she had hidden her pencil. There was a small hole about the size of a quarter where her ear should have been. "As you can see, Mr. McAllister, Sheriff Sweet puts a fairly high price on mindin' your own business in Justice," she added, refilling his cup. "You want some pie?" ~ Kenneth C. Goldman

Paris is a sensuous woman every man has loved, even if only in his dreams. Once he has been deep inside her, walked her streets and tasted her delights, he can never forget her. Yet no matter how strong the memory of her remains, it cannot prepare him for the sheer beauty of her nakedness as he gazes upon her for the second time; the intoxicating fragrance of her hair as it brushes against him as it did when she let him love her; the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips as he strokes her breathtakingly graceful form; or the searing fire which courses through every fiber of his soul now that she is within reach.

For every man blessed with a woman's love, she is a shrine to his happiness now that he need search no more. But for those who reside in obscurity within the lonely domicile of an empty heart, she is the hope of finding love. In his tortured heart, love waits for him at a corner cafe in the woman's smile two tables away; it lingers in the melodic laughter of a girl riding past him on a bicycle; and sometimes, when the woman is smiling at someone else, and the girl rides past him without notice, he finds love beneath the skirt of the darkly sensual woman waiting for him under a streetlamp. ~ Bobby Underwood

An attachment grew up. What is an attachment? It is the most difficult of all the human interrelationships to explain, because it is the vaguest, the most impalpable. It has all the good points of love, and none of its drawbacks. No jealousy, no quarrels, no greed to possess, no fear of losing possession, no hatred (which is very much a part of love), no surge of passion and no hangover afterward. It never reaches the heights, and it never reaches the depths.

As a rule it comes on subtly. As theirs did. As a rule the two involved are not even aware of it at first. As they were not. As a rule it only becomes noticeable when it is interrupted in some way, or broken off by circumstances. As theirs was. In other words, its presence only becomes known in its absence. It is only missed after it stops. While it is still going on, little thought is given to it, because little thought needs to be.

It is pleasant to meet, it is pleasant to be together. To put your shopping packages down on a little wire-backed chair at a little table at a sidewalk cafe, and sit down and have a vermouth with someone who has been waiting there for you. And will be waiting there again tomorrow afternoon. Same time, same table, same sidewalk cafe. Or to watch Italian youth going through the gyrations of the latest dance craze in some inexpensive indigenous night-place-while you, who come from the country where the dance originated, only get up to do a sedate fox trot. It is even pleas ~ Cornell Woolrich

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. ~ Tom Spanbauer

Remember the first time you ever came? Tell the truth. You were dreading it."
His brown eyes laughed warmly. "What wasn't to dread? A godforsaken island in the middle of the Atlantic-"
"It's only eleven miles out."
"Same difference. If it didn't have a hospital, it wasn't on my radar screen."
"You thought there'd be dirt roads and nothing to do."
He gave a wry chuckle. Between lobstering, clamming, and sailing, then movie nights at the church and mornings at the cafe, not to mention dinners at home, in town, or at the homes of friends, Nicole had kept him busy.
"You loved it," she dared.
"I did," he admitted. "It was perfect. A world away. ~ Barbara Delinsky

Under CAFE rules that took effect in 2011, bigger cars have lower mileage requirements. ~ Anonymous

I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side cafe, dealing dominoes like magical charms.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye

The two waiters inside the cafe knew that theo ld man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.
Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.
Why?"
He was in despair."
What about?"
Nothing."
How do you know it was nothing."
He has plenty of money. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Wearing Deni's huge vicuna coat with the si cap over my ears, in cold biting winds of December New York, Irwin and Simon led me up to the Russian Tea Room to meet Salvador Dali.
He was sitting with his chin on a finely decorated tile headed cane, blue and white, next to his wife at the Cafe table. He had a cane, blue and white, next to his wife at the Cafe table. He had a little wax moustache, thin. When the waiter asked him what he wanted he said 'One grapefruit...peenk!' and he had big blue eyes like a baby, a real or Spaniard. He told us no artist was great unless he made money. Was he talking about Uccello, Ghianondri, Franca? We didn't even know what money really was or what to do with it. Dali had already read an article about the 'insurgent' 'beats' and was interested. When Irwin told him (in Spanish) we wanted to meet Marlon Brando (who ate in this Russian Tea Room) he said, waving three fingers at me, 'He is more beautiful than M. Brando.'
I wondered why he said that but he probably had a tiff with old Marlon. But what he meant was my eyes, which were blue, like his, and my hair, which is black, like his, and when I looked into his eyes, and he looked into my eyes, we couldn't stand all that sadness. In fact, when Dali and I look in the mirror we can't stand all that sadness. To Dali sadness is beautiful. ~ Jack Kerouac

amusement in her eyes and had to grin.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, his voice dropping to a low, intimate tone that excluded everyone else in the cafe and made several women draw in their
breath.

Her mouth quirked in that self-amusement that made him want to grab her to him.

"This isn't one of my good days. The only thing holding me together is static cling."

"Come home with me, and I'll take care of you."
She looked him in the eye and said quietly, "Give me one good reason why I should."

Right there in front of God and most of Crook, Montana, he drew in a deep breath and took the gamble of a lifetime, his words plain and heard by all, because no one was making even the pretense of not listening.

"Because I love you."

Maddie blinked, and to his surprise he saw her eyes glitter with tears. Before he could start forward, however, her smile broke through like sunshine through a cloud bank. She didn't take the time to go around the counter; she climbed on top of it and slid off on the other side.

"It's about time," she said as she went into his arms. ~ Linda Howard

I want to go to culinary school because I love cooking. One day I'd love to open up a restaurant or cafe. ~ Mary-Kate Olsen

The cafe was empty, but the cook was unscrewing the outlet plate above my seat. I took my book into the bathroom and read while he finished. When I emerged, the cook was gone and a woman was ready to sit in my seat.
- Excuse me, this is my table.
- Did you reserve it?
- Well, no, but it's my table.
- Did you actually sit here? There's nothing on the table and you have your coat on.
I stood there mutely. If this were an episode of Midsomer Murders she would surely be found strangled in a wild ravine behind an abandoned vicarage. ~ Patti Smith