When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

The only person more cynical than a drunk is a reformed drunk.

Youth endures all things, kings and poetry and love. Everything but time.

Consideration touches more deeply and longer than passion.

I had done either too much coke or too little, a constant problem in my life.

I knew the men were probably terrible people who whistled at pretty girls, treated their wives like servants, and voted for Nixon every chance they got, but as far as I was concerned, they beat the hell out of a Volvo-load of liberals for hard work and good times.

Home is where you hang your hangover.

There's no accounting for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time.

I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead--that's environmentally sound.

Lady bartenders live a tougher life than anybody knows.