Quentin R. Bufogle

“I used to be a hopeless romantic. Now I'm just hopeless.”

“As with most things, my approach to writing has been entirely ass-backwards. I first had to become everything but a writer -- exhaust all possibilities. I had to come to it on my knees. Only when there was truly nothing left, was I able to become a writer.”

“Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following: If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns -- or the one we live in now? If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it's not about life and liberty. It's all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun.”

“Everything's a bad metaphor for sex.”

“Packy watched her walk away, her perfect heart-shaped rear end testing the confines of her tight black dress. There was a God. Packy was now certain of it. How else could such heart-stopping beauty be accounted for? Such a thing could not be the product of a random universe. A flower, maybe. A rainbow, perhaps. But not Venus Versailles.”

“A friend told me that one day he and I would be rich and famous. I told him that I'd trade my half of the fame, for his half of the money.”

“Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse.”

“If you're gonna burn a bridge behind you, make sure you've crossed it first.”

“If a person has no conscience, it's called being a sociopath. If a corporation has no conscience, it's called capitalism.”

“Better a starving eagle, than a well-fed pigeon.”

“Lately the muse has been treating me like Ike treated Tina.”

“One thing I love about politicians; they won't allow the truth to be obscured by a bunch of facts.”

“I want an avowed atheist in the White House. When time comes to push that button, I want whoever's making the decision to understand that once it's pushed, it's over. Finito. They're not gonna have lunch with Jesus. Won't be deflowering 72 virgins on the great shag carpet of eternity, or reincarnated as a cow. I want someone making that decision who believes life on this Earth isn't just a dress rehearsal for something better -- but the only shot we get.”

“After listening to Rick Santorum, I'm now for late-term abortions (say up to age 53).”

“99% of all problems can be solved by money -- and for the other 1% there's alcohol.”

“People ask what's up with this writing business? What do I hope to accomplish? I tell 'em I'm just a brick mason; words are my bricks and I'm building a skyscraper -- one brick at a time.”

“Be thankful for the little you've got, and a little is all you're gonna get.”

“I was planning on procrastinating today . . . but never got around to it.”

“Literature today is like elevator music for a narcoleptic.”

“I must give myself permission not to like myself. It's ok. Plenty of other people don't like me either. And I have much higher standards.”

“There are no sacred cows -- just ask Ronald McDonald.”

“I wish all those who've found God, would tell the rest of us where he's been hiding.”

“Chester watched it shining clearly above the picnic grounds. Soon an astronaut would step down off the LEM of Apollo 11 and plant his foot on what had once been hallowed ground. Science would intrude on what for all known time had been the sole domain of poets and dreamers alone: the moon. After that, well -- one thing was for certain: no matter what they found up there, it would never again be as easy for a father to tell his young son that the mysterious ball of light that appeared in the heavens each night was really just a hunk of old cheese floating in the sky. Nothing would ever be that simple again.”

“And so once again peace reigned in his kitchen cabinet. The voices he'd been hearing as he lie in bed stopped. His doctor took him off the Lithium. Tho every now and again he'd hear what seemed to be the sounds of love making emanating from the kitchen . . . and the muffled sobs of a can of refried beans. Probably just the Mexican couple in the apartment upstairs. (From "Kitchen Cabinet Confidential")”

“I was eating a steak at a local restaurant last night, when a random woman said: "Y'know, you'd be much better off being a vegetarian." "Are you crazy?" I said, "The cow was a vegetarian and look what happened to it!”