Quotes from book

Take the Cannoli

“A couple of times he called the second he'd finished reading a novel and just had to tell me about it, and I know it sounds hokey and librarianish to say so, but I just swooned when he did that.”

“If I looked in the mirror someday and saw no dark circles under my eyes, I would probably look better. I just wouldn't look like me.”

“We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”

“…Clemenza's overriding responsibility is to his family. He takes a moment out of his routine madness to remember that he had promised his wife that he would bring dessert home. His instruction to his partner in crime is an entire moral manifesto in six little words: 'Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

“Frank Sinatra is the first punk… punk comes out of nowhere… punk is… a rumor that spreads… that guts and perseverence mean more than anything else…”

“…the huge Jackson Pollock canvas that is the U. S. A.: vast, murky, splotched and slapped together by a drunk.”