Drink In My Hand Quotes & Sayings

And so to my fool's bed. What was that? No, no, not a girl crying in the garden. No one, cold, hungry, and banished, was shivering there, longing and not daring to come in. It was the chains swinging at the well. It would be folly to get up and go out and call again: Psyche, Psyche, my only love. I am a great queen. I have killed a man. I am drunk like a man. All warriors drink deep after the battle. Bardia's lips on my hand were like the touch of lightning. All great princes have mistresses and lovers. There's the crying again. No, it's only the buckets at the well. "Shut the window, Poobi. To your bed, child. Do you love me, Poobi? Kiss me good night. Good night." The king's dead. He'll never pull my hair again. A straight thrust and then a cut in the leg. That would have killed him. I am the Queen; I'll kill Orual too. — C.S. Lewis

I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks water by the side of the stream. — Bryce Courtenay

A tall man in a plaid work shirt stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. "Can I buy you a drink, little lady?" I reached back and got Jason's hand. I raised it where it was visible. "Taken. Sorry." There was more than one reason I'd wanted to bring Jason with me to a bar on a Friday night. He stared down at Jason, way down, making a show of how very tall he was. "Don't you want something a little bigger?" "I like them small," I said, my face very serious. "It makes oral sex easier." We left him speechless. Jason was laughing so hard, he could barely keep his feet. I pulled him through the crowd by the hand. Holding his hand seemed to be hint enough for the rest of the cruising males. The — Laurell K. Hamilton

Derek said Andrew never went to bed before midnight. If we wanted to get him after he was sound asleep, that meant waiting until two.
To my surprise, I fell asleep, so soundly that i didn't hear the alarm on the watch Derek had given me earlier. I woke to Tori shaking me with one hand, while trying to shut off the alarm with the other.
I yawned and blinked hard.
"Running away after you've barley slept in a week isn't a great idea," she said. "Luckily, I anticipated this."
She popped open a can of coke and handed it to me.
"Not as good as coffee," she said. "But I bet you don't drink coffee do you?"
I shook my head as I gulped.
"Kids," she said, rolling her eyes. — Kelley Armstrong

I think all of us felt," I said, "at least once in our lives, when we were young, we could go over there, after reading the bull stuff in the Spanish stories, that we could go over there and fight. Or at least jog ahead of the running of the bulls, in the early morning, with a good drink waiting at the other end of the run, and your best girl with you there for the long weekend." I stopped. I laughed quietly. For my voice had, without knowing, fallen into the rhythm of his way of saying, either out of his mouth, or from his hand. — Ray Bradbury

I don't know if I can."

I splayed my hand on the bulkhead beside Fran's shoulder and looked her in those pretty green eyes. "It's easier if you don't think about it. Shut it away, think about something else. Drink, fuck, do what you gotta do. Bury it so damn deep, it can't touch you. And before long, you'll forget what you were worried about."

Her lips turned down at the corners. She closed her eyes and sighed. "Is that what you do?"

"It works." Or it had. Until recently. Until One somehow made me look at myself though her eyes. Now I had shit going on in my head, like not wanting to let her down. Not wanting to let any of them down. Like this life and my place in it might actually mean something. That kinda thinking would get a man killed.

~ Caleb — Pippa DaCosta

Dean coughed helpfully. Somewhere in the cough was the word "persuasion." He was throwing Mo a lifeline.
Mo preferred to go down. "I haven't actually read any Austen. I'm more into mysteries, crime fiction, courtroom stuff." This was disappointing, but not damning. On the other hand it was a failing; on the other, manfully owned up to. If only Mo had stopped there.
"I don't read much women's stuff. I like a good plot," he said.
Prudie finished her drink and set her glass down so hard you could hear it hit. "Austen can plot like a son of a bitch," she said. "Bernadette, I believe you were telling us about your first husband."
"I could start with my second. Or the one after that," Bernadette offered. Down with plot! Down with Mo! — Karen Joy Fowler

When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door. I'll open the window, I'll let in a nice, quiet girl
not Frances, not anyone I've ever known
and I'll bolt the door. I'll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me
that one about being chartless
and I'll ask her to read some William Blake to me
that one about the little lamb that made thee
and I'll bolt the door. She'll have an American voice, and she won't ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I'll bolt the door. — J.D. Salinger

I like to go to the frat house and drink with my white friends, because anytime you go drinking at the frat house, white boys bring you a drink and hand it to you like it's a top CIA secret. They'll hand me my drink, and I'll go, 'Man, what the hell is in this?' 'Dude, don't worry. Don't ask, just drink it. I'll see you in 20 minutes.' Next thing you know, I'm buck naked, standing on a coffee table, with a cowboy hat. — Aries Spears

When may did so, he found every cup and saucer, plate, vase, and bowl standing arranged across the floor like pieces in a scaled-up chess game.
"The Whitstable family tree," Bryant explained, entering and setting down his tea tray. "It's the only way I could get it sorted out in my head. I had to see them properly laid out, who was descended from whom." He pointed to a milk jug. "Daisy Whitstable is bottom left-hand corner, by the fireguard. Next to her is the egg cup, brother Tarquin ... Now, pass me Marion and Alfred Whitstable over there."
"What's their significance?"
"We need them to drink out of. — Christopher Fowler

On Drinking Alone by Moonlight


Here are flowers and here is wine,
But where's a friend with me to join
Hand in hand and heart to heart
In one full cup before we part?

Rather than to drink alone,
I'll make bold to ask the moon
To condescend to lend her face
The hour and the scene to grace.

Lo, she answers, and she brings
My shadow on her silver wings;
That makes three, and we shall be.
I ween, a merry company

The modest moon declines the cup,
But shadow promptly takes it up,
And when I dance my shadow fleet
Keeps measure with my flying feet.

But though the moon declines to tipple
She dances in yon shining ripple,
And when I sing, my festive song,
The echoes of the moon prolong.

Say, when shall we next meet together?
Surely not in cloudy weather,
For you my boon companions dear
Come only when the sky is clear. — Li Bai

I fixed her a drink, then lowered myself on the spider's silk of my attention back into One Hundred Years of Solitude and the adventures of the Buendia family. The scene where the prodigal Jose Arcadio hoisted his adopted sister by her waist into his hammock and, in my translation, 'quartered her like a little bird' made my face hot. I bent down the page, whose small triangle marks the instant.
Touching that triangle of yellowed paper today is like sliding my hand into the glove of my seventeen-year-old hand. Through magic, there are the Iowa fields slipping by ... And there is my mother, not yet born into the ziplock baggie of ash my sister sent me years ago with the frank message 'Mom 1/2', written in laundry pen, since no-one in our family ever stood on ceremony. — Mary Karr

Sloane sauntered into the observation room like she didn't have a care in the world, and scowled when she saw the coffee cup in my hand. "I came for coffee," she said. "If you have consumed all the coffee, I am going to straight-up fucking murder you, and drink a latte out of your skull. — Seanan McGuire

Yeah?" he said, looking down into her hungry gaze. "You want to drink from me as I make you come?" She nodded weakly and gave him another small bite in reply. "You got it, sweetheart. But not the wrist this time." Holding her against him, he rolled onto his back and brought her up astride him. "I want to feel you at my neck, Elise. I want to hold you while you drink from me. I want to feel you bite into me." Touching her, he felt her uncertainty. "I've never done it that way before." "Good," he said, entirely too pleased to hear it. "I've never asked anyone to do it that way before. So, will you, Elise?" She frowned, but her eyes were rooted on his throat. "I don't want to hurt you ... " He chuckled, adoring her all the more for her concern. "Come here," he said, wrapping his hand around her nape and guiding her down to the exposed column of his neck. "Sink your teeth into me, Elise. Take your fill." She — Lara Adrian

Isabelle took out her invitation and waved it like a white flag. "I have an invitation. These" - she indicated the rest of the group with a grand wave of her arm - "are my friends."
Magnus plucked the invitation out of her hand and looked at it with fastidious distaste. "I must have been drunk," he said. He threw the door open. "Come in. And try not to murder any of my guests."
Jace edged into the doorway, sizing up Magnus with his eyes. "Even if one of them spills a drink on my new shoes?"
"Even then." Magnus's hand shot out, so fast it was barely a blur. He plucked the stele out of Jace's hand - Clary hadn't even realized he was holding it - and held it up. Jace looked faintly abashed. "As for this," Magnus said, sliding it into Jace's jeans pocket, "keep it in your pants, Shadowhunter. — Cassandra Clare

was starting to raise my hand in a thumbs-down gesture, so he said, "Okay, okay! If we don't drink blood, we look really pale. Regardless of our ethnicity or geographic location or exposure to the sun. And we feel cold to the touch." He paused and looked down at me in exasperation. "I am seriously trying here. Every instinct I have is telling me to use polysyllabic words to impress you. — Temple West

I wandered into the kitchen with my beer cup still in hand. There was nothing worse than being alone at a party. Well, not true. Being alone and sober.

"Hey."

I turned and was actually happy to see Noah. At least I wouldn't be the lonely loser. "Hi."

He glanced at my still mostly full beer.

"I really hardly ever drink. My friend assumes if he puts a beer in my hand I'll drink it; if I don't, he does. I'm more or less his cupholder. — Renita Pizzitola

If you're going to be a dickhead, at least have the courtesy of doing it while I have a drink in my hand so I can throw it in your face! — Nicki Elson

If I have a drink in my hand, sometimes it accidentally falls in the direction of the person. — Jorja Fox

He smiles and pours us each a drink, then puts his glass up in the air. "Here's to my beautiful naked girl." "I'm not drinking to my nakedness." He runs his hand down my stomach. "Oh, but you should." "Dawson! Stop that! We need to order food. I'm starving." "Me too, but it's not my fault you're so damn sexy, and you make me want you. All the time. — Jillian Dodd

I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start. — Ina Garten

I slip my canteen strap over my head, open the lid, and take a drink. Then I hand it to Hampton. A peace offering. "It's not communionif there's no wine."
Hampton tips it to his lips and swallows long and hard. He wipes his mouth when he's done. "Well, darn. The Savior got confused and turned this wine into water."
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Henry says, taking the canteen fromHampton — Rae Carson

O love, whose lordly hand
Has bridled my desires,
And raised my hunger and my thirst
To dignity and pride,
Let not the strong in me and the constant
Eat the bread or drink the wine
That tempt my weaker self.
Let me rather starve,
And let my heart parch with thirst,
And let me die and perish,
Ere I stretch my hand
To a cup you did not fill,
Or a bowl you did not bless. — Kahlil Gibran

Grace surrounds us and holds us like the sky holds everything in it ... and as soon as I find a way to let go of my story, I keep seeing over and over again that grace is always here and it includes the forgetting and the remembering. The practice is the opening of the hand to catch the raindrops, which are always falling. If you don't open your hand, you get wet, but you don't get much to drink. — Krishna Das

Still," he added firmly, "I think you'd best drink no more of it, or ye won't get back up the stairs." He tilted the glass and deliberately drained it himself, then handed the empty goblet to Laoghaire without looking at her. "Take that back, will ye, lass," he said casually. "It's grown late; I believe I'll see Mistress Beauchamp to her chamber." And putting a hand under my elbow, he steered me toward the archway, leaving the girl staring after us with an expression that made me relieved that looks in fact cannot kill. — Diana Gabaldon

While at Colonel Niel's marquee I saw a detail of soldiers bring out a man by the name of Rowland, whom they were going to shoot to death with musketry, by order of a court-martial, for desertion. He was being hauled to the place of execution in a wagon, sitting on an old gun box, which was to be his coffin. When they got to the grave, which had been dug the day before, the water had risen in it, and a soldier was baling it out. Rowland spoke up and said, 'Please hand me a drink of that water, as I want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when I am dead, and remember Rowland. — Sam R. Watkins

And at the high altar of Christianity stands another figure, in whose hand also is the cup of the vine. "Drink" he says "for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know of whence you come and why. Drink, for I know of when you go and where. — G.K. Chesterton

I decide that if I ever get to come back here under different, nonstressful circumstances, I will stay at this hotel and drink fruity drinks and lay in the sand until my skin looks like it had a makeout session with the sun. But today, I'm looking for an inconspicuous way into the water.
We head out of the lobby and get waylaid by hula dancers in grass skirts handing out necklaces of flowers. Apparently Toraf doesn't like necklaces of flowers; as one of the women raises it above his head, he slaps her hand away. I show him, as I accept the gift around my neck, that the woman with the coconut boobs was just trying to be his friend. Just like all the women he's come across so far.
"Humans are too weird," he whispers, unconvinced. I wonder what Toraf would think of Disney World.
Our hotel is right on the water, so we pass through the lobby to the back. The beach is lined with lounge chairs and umbrellas and people scantily clad and people who shouldn't be scantily clad. — Anna Banks

Really, my artiste, you amaze me. The lengths you will go to in order to accomplish your own destruction. The redundancy of it! In Night City, you had it, in the palm of your hand! The speed to eat your sense away, drink to keep it all so fluid, Linda for a sweeter sorrow, and the street to hold the axe. How far you've come, to do it now, and what grotesque props. . . . Playgrounds hung in space, castles hermetically sealed, the rarest rots of old Europa, dead men sealed in little boxes, magic out of China. . . . — William Gibson

You should go order a sweet roll. Those are to die for. And a carne adovada burrito."
His mouth thinned. "Should I order something else to drink?"
"Yes! A diet whatever. No! A mocha latte. No!" I held up my hand to put him in pause so I could think. "Yes, a mocha latte."
"Are you finished?" he asked, rising to go place his order. He was really hungry.
"Yes. No! Yes. I'm good with that. I have a busy afternoon ahead of me, and I need all the energy I can get. And I need you to be my wingman."
"This should be interesting," he said, sauntering off like he owned the place.
By the time he got back, his fries had disappeared. It was weird. — Darynda Jones

I give you a week, maybe two, before you're driven to bite someone."
"I don't know how to ... to bite or drink! But you could teach me."
"And what could you possibly do in return?" Lothaire waved a negligent hand. "Play football for me? Break in my jeans really well? — Kresley Cole

They all laughed. I drew their pictures and they asked for copies and I handed them out as if they were my tickets to the show. In the Navy Yard, I could drink with men because I worked with men; in the Parkview, I could drink with men because I drew their pictures. The world was a grand confusion. Finally, when I was bleary, when my hand wouldn't do what I wanted it to do, I went home. I would lie alone in the dark, feeling that I was a character in a story that had lost its plot. — Pete Hamill

In the black hour before dawn, they stopped to let the horses drink and fed them each a handful of oats and a twist or two of hay. "We are not far from the place the wildlings died," said Qhorin. "From there, one man could hold a hundred. The right man." He looked at Squire Dalbridge.
The squire bowed his head. "Leave me as many arrows as you can spare, brothers." He stroked his longbow. "And see my garron has an apple when you're home. He's earned it, poor beastie." He's staying to die, Jon realized.
Qhorin clasped the squire's forearm with a gloved hand. "If the eagle flies down for a look at you..."
"...he'll sprout some new feathers. — George R R Martin

Unfortunately, he still hadn't asked for my number, or a date, or my hand in marriage, and my drink was getting low. — Kimberly Novosel

If only there were a river of courage, - Rahel whispered. I would bend down, cup the water in my hand and drink. — Jane Kurtz

Skye snorted. "Parents are so lame sometimes. Mine think I'm a virgin. They also think I'd never drink beer because I'm a calorie freak. No one is that much of a calorie freak."
Frowning as she yanked me along, I wondered about the calories in those tacos. Skye must have sensed my concerns because she snorted again.
"The freshman fifteen is expected. If we don't pack on a little weight, people will think we're full of ourselves. Those girls over there," she said, waving her hand in the direction of a bevy of pretty sorority girls. "They're obsessed with being hot. Unfortunately, while you can snag a man by being hot, you can't keep him. To keep them, you have to be confident and I am. I'm just confident enough to pack on a few pounds from eating tacos. I'm a keeper — Bijou Hunter

Because this week I've started in on a hundred reproductions of Rembrandt van Rijn, a hundred portraits of the old artist with the mushroom face, the face of a man pushed to the brink of eternity by art and drink, the door handle starting to turn, the final door pushed open from without by an unknown hand, and I'm beginning to have his puff-paste face, that peeling, piss-soaked wall of a face, I'm beginning to smile his half-moronic smile, to look at the world from the other side of human causes and events, and all my bales these days are framed with that portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn as an old man while I keep filling my drum with wastepaper and open books. — Bohumil Hrabal

Standing on the bridge, looking across at that empty city, everything in the compass of my gaze had been set there by a human hand. Somehow those pylons had been strung with wire, and those towers raised, and roofs tiled. There had been food and drink for millions of mouths. I don't cry easy, but my vision blurred as I stared on the ruins of what we had been, and I watched the small band of men in rags move toward it to pick at it like birds on the carcass of some giant. — Marcel Theroux

Cambodian dust whipped up in the wind and stuck to my clothes like clay. I put a hand between my face and the sun and blinked Phnom Penn dust from my tired eyes. One idea, drink, beamed light in all directions across my dark consciousness.
A slim lady walked toward me with a big smile and a bigger head. Her left hand rested on her waggling hips and her right hand rose above her head, limp-wristed, like she'd just thrown a winning ball toward a basket and was leaving her hand in the shot position. The lady walking toward me was a man. At least that much was clear, but the nature or our relationship was still a fog to me. She wore blue jeans and a white top accentuating her breasts, but her Adam's apple and cow sized hands revealed more in daylight than she could hide at night. — Craig Stone

You are tired of being alone. You told me."
"You don't know," he said in a low, almost hostile voice. He shook his head. "I don't even know what
I'm doing with you. You're not like anyone else who's in my life - " He stopped abruptly. "Did you ever
drink too much wine,Alice ?" He held up the glass in his hand and waggled it idly, making the ruby
contents swirl.
"I'm not one to overindulge."
"No, you wouldn't be,Allow me to explain, then, that the more you drink, the more thirsty you become. Not all the wine in the world can assuage the thirst for water. Water. Wine makes
you merry, but a man needs water to keep him alive. Pure, clean, sweet water. I am parched,Alice , scorched like a wasteland, burning
like a damned soul in hell. I thirst. — Gaelen Foley

After a desperate fight, to know to congratulate your opponent, if he has beaten you, to shake his hand and go for a drink with him, in my eyes these things are particularly important. — Yannick Noah

I make grilled cheeses for lunch, one for me, two for Will. We don't have any chips, but I find a far of pickles in the pantry.
"This is the best thing I've ever eaten." He pauses for a drink, staring at me over the rim of his glass of juice.
"It's the provolone," I say, swallowing my last bite.
"It's the chef."
I smile and look away.
We listen to music. Talk. Kiss until my flesh glimmers gold-red. Warms to the touch from the deep scald at my core. He stops to watch. Leans his face close to my neck and smells my skin. Like I'm something he might taste. He sweeps his hands along my arms ... making me burn hotter.
"Is this what it's like for other fire-breathers?" he asks, winks, holding my hand up in his broad palm. "Or is it just me and my magic hands? — Sophie Jordan

I could lie there as long as I wanted, and let all the pictures of things a man might want run through my head, coffee, a girl, money, a drink, white sand and blue water, and let them all slide off, one after another, like a deck of cards slewing slowly off your hand. Maybe the things you want are like cards. You don't want them for themselves, really, though you think you do. You don't want a card because you want the card, but because in a perfectly arbitrary system of rules and values and in a special combination of which you already hold a part the card has meaning. But suppose you aren't sitting in a game. Then, even if you do know the rules, a card doesn't mean a thing. They all look alike. — Robert Penn Warren

It doesn't taste anything like the drink I had at the party with Tucker. And now, almost two years later, I realize why. Tucker never put any rum in my rum and Coke.
That little stink.
That overly protective, impossible, infuriating, and utterly sweet little stink.
In that moment I miss him so much my stomach hurts. — Cynthia Hand

...true death, my friend and counselor, who was never again going to allow me to act like such a coward...He was not going to allow me to put off until tomorrow what I should be enjoying today. He was not going to let me flee from life's battles, and he was going to help me fight the good fight. Never again, ever, was I going to feel ridiculous about doing anything. Because he was there, saying that when he took me in hand to travel with me to other worlds, I should leave behind the greatest sin of all: regret. With the certainty of his presence and the gentleness of his face, I was sure that I was going to be able to drink from the fountain of life. — Paulo Coelho

I didn't want to hear this. "What the hell are you talking about?" "Necromancer with a chaser of werewolf; a drink to make any vampire giddy." He giggled. Jean-Claude never giggled. I ignored him, if you can ignore an intoxicated vampire. "Jason, can you stand?" "I think so." His voice was thick, heavy but not sleepy, more the languor after sex. Maybe I was glad my bite had hurt. "Larry?" Larry walked over to us, glancing at Magnus, gun naked in his hand. He didn't look happy. "Can we trust him?" "We're going to," I said. "Help me stand up, and let's get out of here before fangface busts a gut." Jean-Claude was doubled over with laughter. He seemed to think "fangface" was outrageously funny. Ye gods. Larry — Laurell K. Hamilton

They sat on a bench and Sproule held his wounded arm to his chest and rocked back and forth and blinked in the sun. What do you want to do? said the kid. Get a drink of water. Other than that. I dont know. You want to try and head back? To Texas? I don't know where else. We'd never make it. Well you say. I aint got no say. He was coughing again. He held his chest with his good hand and sat as if he'd get his breath. What have you got, a cold? I got consumption. Consumption? He nodded. I come out here for my health. — Cormac McCarthy

It's certainly nice to have my options open." He looked back out at the city. "Can this possibly work, Mister Brekker? Or am I risking the fate of Ravka and the world's Grisha on the honor and abilities of a fast-talking urchin?"
"More than a bit of both," said Kaz. "You're risking a country. We're risking our lives. Seems a fair trade."
The king of Ravka offered his hand. "The deal is the deal?"
"The deal is the deal."
They shook.
"If only treaties could be signed so quickly," he said, his easy privateer's mien sliding back in place like a mask purchased on West Stave. "I'm going to have a drink and a bath. One can take only so much mud and squalor. As the rebel said to the prince, it's bad for the constitution."
He flicked an invisible speck of dust from his lapel and sauntered out of the solarium. — Leigh Bardugo

With my book in one hand
And my drink in the other
What more could I want

But fame,
Better health,
And ten million dollars? — Kenneth Burke

I know what I'm looking for, my brain just can't get to it. It's like if you decided you wanted that glass of water, only your hand won't pick it up. You ask it nicely, you threaten it, but it just won't budge. You might finally get it to move, but then you grab the saltshaker instead, or you knock the glass and spill the water all over the table. Or by the time you get your hand to hold the glass and bring it to your lips, the itch in your throat has cleared, and you don't need a drink anymore. The moment of need has passed." "That sounds like torture, Mom." "It is." "I'm so sorry you have this." "Thanks. — Lisa Genova

The wave of pure outrage blindsided me. I shouldn't be here, I thought. This is utterly fucked up. I should have been sitting in a garden down the road, barefoot with a drink in my hand, swapping the day's work stories with Peter and Jamie. I had never thought about this before, and it almost knocked me over: all the things we should have had. We should have stayed up all night together studying and stressing out before exams, Peter and I should have argued over who got to bring Jamie to our first dance and slagged her about how she looked in her dress. We should have come weaving home together, singing and laughing and inconsiderate, after drunken college nights. We could have shared a flat, taken off Interrailing around Europe, gone arm-in-arm through dodgy fashion phases and low-rent gigs and high-drama love affairs. Two of us might have been married by now, given the other one a godchild. I had been robbed blind. — Tana French

The Father wipes the silver chalice with a beautiful linen rag large as a small tablecloth, turns the cup two inches each time to keep you from having to drink where the last worshipper lipped it, as if that takes care of the germs. But I don't care, I always reach out very piously - that's to say, in slow motion, the way you move for some reason to take and eat the body of Our Savior - reach out and lay my hand over the Father's in somber reverence to the moment and then press down as the silver rim clears my upper lip and suck a slug of wine that should have fed six communers. I have to, because the bread of His body is stuck to the roof of my mouth like a rubber tire patch, and if I can't wash it loose by swishing His blood around, I'm going to have to dig it off with a finger, in slow motion, and possibly gag. When — Padgett Powell

Well, he replied, finally letting my hand go so that he could gesticulate with his; you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them, shiver from their fevers, drink strange brew fermented in their virgins' mouths, and all the rest; then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one that they kind of know exists, but only as an abstract concept, like adultery for children; and, waving with big, gap-toothed smiles, they send you back to your study - where, khakis swapped for cotton shirt and tie, saliva-liquor for the Twinings, tisane or iced Scotch your housekeeper purveys you on a tray, you write the book: that's what I mean, he said. Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name. — Tom McCarthy