“But many details were considered too small and mundane for the Centurions' purposes. They tapped the mud too briefly for things like new-fangled coffee-makers to matter. Instant coffee that tasted like a wet dream was apparently one of them.”

“I like instant gratification. It’s like instant coffee, only it won’t keep you up all night.”

“Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.”

“He liked the idea of coffee quite a lot—a warm drink that gave you energy and had been for centuries associated with sophisticates and intellectuals. But coffee itself tasted to him like caffeinated stomach bile.”

“Peanut: Too much starbucks coffee, coffee, coffee!Jeff: You didn't have coffee before the show!Peanut: I admit it was crack.Jeff: You didn't do crackPeanut: Then you did! It feels like one of us did!Peanut: Don't you do crack?Jeff: No! I'VE NEVER DONE CRACK!Peanut: Alright. I admit Jeff does not abuse drugs. He's an alcoholic.”

“They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more.”