“If I was drunk, I wouldn’t be here at all. And really, this is pretty good for four White Russians.”“White what?” I almost sat down but was afraid the chair might dematerialize beneath me.“It’s a drink,” he said. “You’d think I wouldn’t be into something named that—you know, considering my own personal experience with Russians. But they’re surprisingly delicious. The drinks, not real Russians.”

“Like a White Russian drinking tea in Paris, marooned in the twentieth century, I wander back, try to regain hose distant pathways; I become too maudlin, lose myself. Weep...I sit in the chair and ooze like a sponge.”

“They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table.”

“Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.”

“A year ago,' I said, 'you wouldn’t have asked this of me.''A year ago,' he answered, 'you wouldn’t have hesitated to drink.' I crossed to the desk and tossed it down.”

“Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Travelling companion’. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.”