Quotes from George Alec Effinger

I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking.

You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't you ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent.

It was a good thing I wasn't afraid, because I was scared stiff.

The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them.

if I examine myself closely enough, I find hints of every objectionable quality known to man.

I closed my eyes and wished I believed in something enough to pray to it.

Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn't throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn't flush your friends down the toilet. If that's the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don't deserve to have either. Give them to me. Drugs are wonderful things. I won't listen to anybody trying to get me to give them up. I'd rather give up food and drink—in fact, on occasion, I have.

If I have to go into that good night, I'm goin' gentle ; the hell with whoever said not to. That sucker's dead , man, so what did he know? Not even the courage of his convictions.

Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn't throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn't flush your friends down the toilet. If that's the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don't deserve to have either. Give them to me.

Just 'cause the cat had her kittens in the oven don't make them biscuits.

Today I'm well fed, well dressed, and well liked by the right people, and all it's cost me is what you'd expect: my self-respect and the approval of most of my friends.

he has this huge blind spot where other people have a sense of humor.

You just can't expect business to start immediately, not until you'd drunk at least three cups of coffee. If you declined sooner, you risked insulting your host. All the while the coffee- and tea-drinking was going on, Hassan and I asked after the health of the other's family and friends, and called on Allah to bless this one and that one and protect all of us and the whole Muslim world from the depredations of the infidel.

The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them. The

The most frequent expression in the Muslim world is inshallah, if God wills. It removes all guilt: blame it on Allah. If the oasis dries up and blows away, it was Allah's will. If you get caught sleeping with your brother's wife, it was Allah's will. Getting your hand or your cock or your head chopped off in reprisal is Allah's will, too.

The police don't enforce laws; they don't even get busy until after the laws are broken. They solve crimes at a pitifully low rate of success. What the police are, to be honest, is a kind of secretarial pool that records the names of the victims

Madness, by the life of the Prophet! Audran felt as if he were peering through a narrow tunnel, seeing the world with Abu Adil's mean, self-centered outlook. Things were only good for Abu Adil, or bad for Abu Adil; if they were neither, they did not exist.

Jacques is the kind of guy, if his house was burning in the night, most people in the Budayeen would write him a postcard and drop it in the mail to warn him.

Hartstein was trying to keep himself under control. He wanted to scream; getting information from Brannick was like getting credit from the phone company.

The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes.

I don't carry a weapon, Mr. Bogatyrev. Not usually. I've never been in a situation where I needed one. Either the other guy has one, and I do what he says, or he doesn't, and I make him do what I say.

Be cheerful, my brother! he said. You're alive, and you're with friends!

This nigger girl scared for white bwana.

Bowling is sex. Bowling is a symbolic form of intercourse, except you don't have to bother about the feelings of some other person. Bowling is sex without guilt. Bowling is what people have wanted down through all the millennia: sex without the slightest responsibility. It's the very distillation of the essence of sex.