Bars Quotes

“I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that's wonderful.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to get apes to draw these pictures, to make art pictures like the kinds of pictures in serious motherfucking paintings that you see in museums and shit. So the scientist keeps showing the apes these paintings and giving them charcoal pencils to draw with and then one day one of the apes finally draws something but it’s not the art pictures that it draws. What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that's the truth, ain't it?”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“We named the bar The Bar. "People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt," my sister reasoned.
Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers - that the name was a joke no one else would really get, like we did. Not meta-get ... But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, "I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Bruce has always been so nice to me, which is crazy, because he's one of my heroes. I'll never forget being at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony the year Bruce and Paul McCartney were inducted. We were at the bar, and Bruce was talking to Paul, and he turned to me and said, 'I can't believe I'm talking to Paul McCartney!' I thought, 'I can't believe I'm talking to Bruce Springsteen, who's talking to Paul McCartney!”
― Melissa Etheridge

“To some I am known as Chief. And these are usually people who work in Radio Shack or try to sell me shoes. To others I am known as Buddy. These are people who dwell in bars and wonder if I’ve got a problem or what it is that I am “looking at.” And to still others, who are in that same bar, standing just off to the side, I am “Get Him!”
― Demetri Martin

“People in bars are always claiming to be boxers, hoping thereby to ward off attack, like a black snake will vibrate its tail in leaves and try to impersonate a rattlesnake.”
― William S. Burroughs, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

“The pub, like pubs all over the world, was a place for debate and discussion, for the exchange of views and opinions, for argument and for the working out of problems. It was a forum, a parliament, a fountain of wisdom and a cesspool of nonsense, it was a centre for the lost and the despairing, where cowards absorbed dutch courage out of small glasses and leaned against the shiny, scratched and polished mahogany counter for support against the crushing burdens of insignificant lives. Where the disillusioned gained temporary hope, where acts of kindness were considered and murders planned.”
― Alex La Guma, A Walk in the Night and Other Stories

“We had dry martinis; great wing-shaped glasses of perfumed fire, tangy as the early morning air.”
― Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado

“Values beat experience when experience doesn't work hard.”
― Doug Radkey, Bar Hacks: Developing The Fundamentals for an Epic Bar

“A termite walks into the bar, slowly crawls up on the bar stool and says, "I have been searching all over town and have been to bars all over, been to five just on this block, I am old, tired and in my senior years and my choppers don't work well anymore -- tell me now please: Where, Oh where is the Bar tender?”
― Scott Edward Shjefte

“Behind the counter sat one of those absolutely inimitable and indomitable ladies, produced only in the city of Paris, but produced there in great numbers, who would be as outraged and unsettling in any other city as a mermaid on a mountain-top. All over Paris they sit behind their counters like a mother bird in a nest and brood over the cash-register as though it were an egg. Nothing occurring under the circle of heaven where they sit escapes their eye, if they have ever been surprised by anything, it was only in a dream - a dream they long ago ceased having. They are neither ill- nor good-natured, though they have their days and styles, and they know, in the way, apparently, that other people know when they have to go to the bathroom, everything about everyone who enters their domain. Though some are white-haired and some not, some fat, some thin, some grandmothers and some but lately virgins, they all have exactly the same shrewd, vacant, all-registering eye; it is difficult to believe that they ever cried for milk, or looked at the sun; it seems they must have come into the world hungry for banknotes, and squinting helplessly, unable to focus their eyes until they came to rest on a cash-register.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Well into the 1960s, the supposed threat of B-girls was used to justify excluding women from bars. Better ban an entire gender to protect those fragile male egos! Better to deny women access to a public space than have a man realize that the only way a woman would listen to his stupid work stories is if she's being paid!”
― Mallory O'Meara, Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol

“What do you fear, lady?’ he asked.
‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King”
― J R R Tolkien

“If we should meet again I hope there will be something in the way of a wateringhole where I can stand you a round. Perhaps show you about the place. Look for a tall and somewhat raffish looking chap in a tailored robe.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger

“Barbara usually stayed at home or spent the evening with Stephen and Mary. But Stephen and Mary would not always be there, for now they also went out fairly often; and where was there to go to except the bars? Nowhere else could two women dance together without causing comment and ridicule, without being looked upon as freaks, argued Mary.”
― Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

“He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted café was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it's probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Clean Well-Lighted Place

“...it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Clean Well-Lighted Place

“When I pass the bar, you'll be barred from bars but put behind them.”
― Natalya Vorobyova, Better to be able to love than to be loveable

“I have been searching all over town and have been to bars all over, been to five just on this block, I am old, tired and in my senior years and my choppers don't work well anymore -- tell me now please: Where, Oh where is the Bar tender?”
― Scott Edward Shjefte

“Just because they were homey didn't mean they were ordinary. Most versions of this recipe relied on butterscotch chips, waxy little chunks of hydrogenated oil and synthetic butterscotch flavor. Bev's used malted milk powder and a truckload of butter, relying on the interaction between the oven's heat and the milk powder to give that toasty, caramelized flavor that suggested rather than screamed butterscotch. Melody's version also subbed brown sugar for some of the white with a healthy shot of molasses to add a deep, earthy note. At the last moment, she added some chopped hazelnuts from a little glass jar in the cabinet for extra texture and flavor.
Thoughts of Justin faded as she mixed and spread the batter, then slid the shallow jelly roll pan into the oven where it would bake into a sheet of butterscotchy, nutty deliciousness. When it came out dozens of minutes later, fragrant and golden brown, she inhaled the aroma, basking in her sense of accomplishment at a perfect result. There was nothing like taking basic ingredients and transforming them into something both beautiful and tasty.”
― Carla Laureano, Brunch at Bittersweet Café

“That shit where the dark, dashing stranger comes in and charms the pants off a bartender, literally, and fucks her at break time in the bathroom or in a back alley or closet? Only happens in the movies, or on cable TV. In real life, it takes months and an actual friendship to be able to fuck your bartender, and even then it’ll have to be done on the sly. Shit’s bad for business.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“You can’t even go to a bar anymore, meet strangers that become friends or women who become lovers. You need the extra step of finding them through an app or bonding over an app, that or the make and model of your fucking phone, which you must display as much as possible.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Raffe lifted the latch on the heavy door and sidled in. As usal, he gagged as he took his first breath in the cloying, fishy stink of the smoke that rose from the burning seabirds, which were skewered on to the wall spikes in place of candles. In the dim oily light, he could make out the vague outlines of men sitting in twos and threes around the tables, heard the muttered conversations, but could no more recognize a face than see his own feet in the shadows.

A square, brawny woman deposited a flagon and two leather beakers on a table before waddling across to Raffe. Pulling his head down towards hers, she planted a generous

kiss on his smooth cheek. Thought you'd left us,' she said reprovingly. You grown tired of my eel pic?'

How could anyone grow tired of a taste of heaven?' Raffe said, throwing his arm around her plump shoulders and squeezing her.

The woman laughed, a deep, honest belly chuckle that set

her pendulous breasts quivering. Raffe loved her for that. 'He's over there, your friend,' she murmured. 'Been wait ing a good long while.'

Raffe nodded his thanks and crossed to the table set into a
dark alcove, sliding on to the narrow bench. Even in the dirty mustard light he could recognize Talbot's broken nose and thickened ears.

Talbot looked up from the rim of his beaker and grunted. By way of greeting he pushed the half-empty flagon of ale towards Raffe. Raffe waited until the serving woman had set a large portion of eel pie in front of him and retreated out of earshot. He hadn't asked for food, no one ever needed to here. In the Fisher's Inn you ate and drank whatever was put in front of you and you paid for it too. The marsh and river were far too close for arguments, and the innkeeper was a burly man who had beaten his own father to death when he was only fourteen, so rumour had it, for taking a whip to him once too often. Opinion was divided on whether the boy or the father deserved what they suffered at each other's hands, but still no one in those parts would have dreamed of report ing the killing. And since the innkeeper's father lay rotting somewhere at the bottom of the deep, sucking bog, he wasn't in a position to complain.”
― Karen Maitland, The Gallows Curse

“Pintman Paddy Losty.
Some of Dublin's great pintmen have been known to put away thirty pints or more in a day”
― Kevin C. Kearns, Dublin Pub Life and Lore: An Oral History

“. . . ladies' night was not designed as a perk for women. It was designed as an attraction for men. Women were commodified at ladies' nights. They were the bar's loss leaders, not the customers that the bar ultimately cared about.”
― Mallory O'Meara, Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol

“Food for the Gods was a rich, buttery date and walnut bar, which doesn't sound all that special, but there was something absolutely addictive about it. Bernadette claimed to hate dates, yet she could eat an entire tray of these bars all by herself, they were that good.
Between the five of us, we demolished Lola Flor's desserts, despite how full we were before they arrived. There truly was a separate stomach for sweets.”
― Mia P. Manansala, Blackmail and Bibingka

“My girlfriend going out to bars without me is how the failure of our relationship started.”
― Steven Magee

“Of all the places, bars are the most intriguing. The world will be a too lousy place to be without bars in it.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“We would meet in Bars,
Bukowski and me,
And we would drink our whiskies neat,
Because that's what writers and poets did!”
― Avijeet Das

“He was going to be relentless. She could tell. This was a kid who prided himself on remembering customers, who would want to make conversation, who probably thought of himself as a charmer, who probably thought that he got tips because of his personality and not because his customers were scared to be assholes. Sure enough, he put a glass of water in front of her and leaned his elbows against the bar as if they were both people.”
― Sarah Gailey, Just Like Home