Quotessence
Home / Topics / Bartender Quotes

Bartender Quotes

Browse 106 quotes about Bartender.

Related topics

BarsKnowsThinkingPeopleBartendingDrinkIfsDad

Bartender Quotes

“The whiskey was a good start. I got the idea from Dylan Thomas. He's this poet who drank twenty-one straight whiskeys at the White Horse Tavern in New York and then died on the spot from alcohol poisoning. I've always wanted to hear the bartender's side of the story. What was it like watching this guy drink himself out of here? How did it feel handing him number twenty-one and watching his face crumple up before the fall of the stool? And did he already have number twenty-two poured, waiting for this big fat tip, and then have to drink it himself after whoever came took the body away?”

DeathNew YorkSadThoughtsTragedySuicideWineDrinkingAlcoholTragicAlcoholismWhiskeySuicidal ThoughtsBartenderTipsAlcohol AddictionBarDylan Thomas
Book:Suicide Notes
Create image

“The honky-tonk bartender, who doubled as bouncer, waiter, and cashier, was in no mood to compromise. Mercy was not in him. He came out around the open end of the long counter, waddled threatening across the floor in a sullen, red-faced fury and began to shake the inanimate figure lying across the table with its head bedded on its arms. "Hey, you! Do your sleeping in the gutter!" If you gave these bums an inch; they took a yard. And this one was a particularly glaring example of the genus bar-fly. He was in here all the time like this, inhaling smoke and then doing a sunset across the table. He'd been in here since four this afternoon. The boss and he, who were partners in the joint - the bartender called it jernt - would have been the last ones to claim they were running a Rainbow Room, but at least they were trying to give the place a little class, keep it above the level of a Bowery smoke-house; they even paid a guy to pound the piano and a canary to warble three times a week. And then bums like this had to show up and give the place a bad look! He shook the recumbent figure again, more roughly than the first time. Shook him so violently that the whole reedy table under him rattled and threatened to collapse. "Come on, clear out, I said! Pay me for what you had and get outa here!" ("I'm Dangerous Tonight")”

DrunkBartenderBarBumsBarflyBum S Rush
Book:The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
Create image

“Hi, Lloyd, a little slow tonight isn't it?' Lloyd said it was. Lloyd asked him what would it be. 'Now I'm really glad you asked me that, really glad. Because I happen to have two twenties and two tens in my wallet and I was afraid they'd be sitting right there until sometime next April. There isn't a 7-Eleven around here, would you believe it? And I thought they had 7-Elevens on the fucking moon.' Lloyd sympathized. 'So here's what, you set me up an even twenty martinis...One for every month I've been on the wagon and one to grow on. You can do that, can't you? You aren't too busy? Lloyd said he wasn't busy at all. 'Good man. You line those martinis up right along the bar and I'm going to take them down, one by one. White man's burden, Lloyd my man.' Lloyd turned to do the job. Jack reached into his pocket for the money clip and came out with an Excedrin bottle instead. 'I seem to be momentarily light,' Jack said. 'How's my credit in this joint, anyhow?' Lloyd said his credit was fine. 'That's super. I like you, Lloyd. You were always the best of them. Best damned barkeep between Barre and Portland, Maine. Portland, Oregon for that matter.”

HorrorBartenderBarKubrick
Book:THE SHINING
Create image

“In Taiwan, where bubble tea was invented, people have been drinking Chinese tea styles with milk since Dutch colonization in the seventeenth century. But milk tea-- specifically, Indian black teas where milkiness is as important as the tea-- arrived late, some time around the Second World War. As the story goes, a former bartender, Chang Fan Shu, thought to serve it cold, and shake it like you would a cocktail. When he did this, the fats and proteins in the milk allowed it to form a foam, and he made what people started to call bubble tea. Some shops started serving iced versions, shaken like a cocktail. And then in the eighties, in a Taiwanese tea shop-- and nobody can agree which one-- someone had the idea of adding chewy pearls of tapioca starch to the bubble tea, making bubble tea-squared. New variants quickly appeared. Earl Grey boba tea. Milkless jasmine green tea or osmanthus versions. A lot of the time the tea was lost completely, most notably in the crystalline pop fruit flavors such as lychee or mulberry, although also in milkshake-like blends like lilac taro.”

FlavorsFoamBartenderTaiwanOriginsBubble Tea
Book:All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now
Create image

“Grizzled white men poured drinks and dispensed dubious wisdom. Young white women in tight clothes delivered the food and the smiles and said "sorry" all the time. Short brown men cooked it all and cleaned it all up, and still managed to rise above the racial oppression of the United states to make kissing sounds at us waitresses whenever we were in the kitchen.”

WaitressBartenderFood ServiceWaitressing
Book:Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics
Create image

“David Lipan, a skilled server and bartender, developed his expertise while residing in Arizona. Beginning his journey in Tucson, he embraced the art of serving and bartending, paving the way for a successful career. Currently working as a server at a renowned steakhouse, David appreciates the dynamic nature of his role and the opportunities it brings to meet fascinating individuals.”

BartenderAuroraServersDavidlipanDegree In Business Management
Author:David Lipan
Create image

“Dear wanderer, come in and let the weight of the world’s straps slide from the downcast face of your unhappy shoulders, because the universe is a bartender and life is a perpetual party where all the drunken birds join with songs to sing the anthem of your beautiful existence.”

LifeHappinessPartyExistenceSelf LoveUnhappinessSingWanderingBartenderThe Universe
Book:Guru In The Glass: A Mysterious Encounter While Dying To Live The Unlived Life
Create image

“I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, 'Hey, I know this director and he'd really like you!'. So I walked into this guy's office and was like 'I was thinking maybe I could make $3000' and he hired me for commercials, short films, like 15 jobs in a row.”

ThinkingKnowsMadeKidsJobsFilmGuyGirlNew YorkLike YouDirectorsOfficeHeyThis GuyThis GirlBartenderShort FilmsReally Like You
Author:Pauley Perrette
Create image

“I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films. I got grants from NYSCA and NEA for an idea, which later became 'Huckabees,' about a guy in a Chinese restaurant who had microphones on every table and heard every personal conversation and would write perversely personal fortunes.”

WritingIdeasJobsFilmGuyClassHeardTaughtConversationOfficeTablesFortuneVariousChineseSatRestaurantsGrantsMicrophonesDay JobsBartenderShort Films
Author:David O. Russell
Create image

“They know you can't get people to stop smoking, so they develop a system of informants. That's the whole idea of second-hand smoke, you know. Make second-hand smoke dangerous and turn everybody against smokers. Then they say you can't even smoke in a bar - a bar! - because bartenders have a right to a smoke-free "workspace." Ah, bartenders, those health nuts.”

PeopleKnowsIdeasWholeHandsTurnsDangerousBarsSmokeSmokingNutsSmokersSecond HandBartenderStop SmokingInformantsWorkspaceSecond Hand Smoke
Author:Fran Lebowitz
Create image

“Well, it looks like John Boehner will be the new Speaker of the House. He is the son of a bartender, one of 12 children. He grew up in a two room home with just one bathroom, worked his way through school, became the first person in his family to graduate from college. And, sadly, fell in with the wrong crowd and wound up in Congress.”

WayFirstsWellsLooksChildrenPersonsTwoHomeSchoolHouseRoomsCollegeSonGrewGrew UpCongressCrowdsWoundsJust OneGraduatesSpeakersBathroomFirst PersonBartenderWrong Crowd
Author:Jay Leno
Create image

“At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked seaport of half a million people, with a front seat at every public show, as free of the night as of day, and getting earfuls of instruction in a hundred giddy arcana, none of them taught in schools.... [But] if I neglected the humanities, I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer, or a midwife.”

PeopleIfsShowsSchoolNightHumanityEducationHalfMillionsGenerationsFrontsTaughtCollegeHundredPoliceLawyerSeatsWickedInstructionOppressedWorldlyNeglectedRespectableBourgeoisMy GenerationYoungstersFreshmanBartenderGiddyMidwifeLieutenantsSophomoreWorldly WisdomCollege Freshmen
Author:H. L. Mencken
Create image

“Pain is subtle. He has cold grey fingers. His voice is horse from crying & screaming... When people try to avoid him, he follows them silently & turns upas the bartender, or the bus driver... Pain has an elaborate filing system for keeping track of everyone... Pain respects people who are willing to take risks. If you... face him directly, he will give you a special ointment so your wounds don't fester.”

PeopleIfsGivingTryingPainFacesTurnsVoiceRiskSpecialCryWillingColdHorseFingersTrackWoundsSubtleDriversBusGreyBartenderFilingRespect PeopleBus Driver
Author:J. Ruth Gendler
Create image

“I've had a lot of glamour come my way in the last 10 years - you know, movie stars and mansions and red carpets and trips to Europe and crazy stuff I never would have imagined - and I look at them as if I'm the bartender in the corner of the room. They've never gone into my psyche. I look at them with distance, and wonder.”

IfsKnowsWayYearsLooksLastsStarsStuffRoomsWonderGoneCrazyEuropeRedDistanceCornersMy WayMovie StarCarpetGlamourMansionsRed CarpetBartender
Author:Andre Dubus
Create image

“I think they [TV productions] were just kind of drying up. I'd done a couple of episodes, but nothing was happening. So I went to Vancouver to visit a buddy and see what was going on, and that year was crazy. Vancouver was on fire at that point. It was all these Stephen J. Cannell productions - The Commish being one of them - and in one I was a bartender, and I think I had five lines.”

ThinkingYearsKindDoneLinesFireFiveCrazyTvsCoupleHappeningsProductionsEpisodesBuddyVancouverBartender
Author:Eric McCormack
Create image

“I was in Athens for a football match when 9/11 went down, and it was quite spectacular - we went into this bar and tried to find out what happened, and the bartender said "it's only the American and the Arabs. They're not big football nations." So the feeling was, what's it got to do with us? Why are football games being cancelled in Europe? The intelligentsia in the West feel like they have to figure out the significance of it all, whereas people have other pressing concerns, related to basic needs.”

PeopleNeedsFeelsSaidFeelingsBigsGamesNationsHappenedFiguresFootballEuropeConcernDown AndWestBarsRelatedSignificanceSpectacularFootball GameAthensBartenderBasic NeedsFootball Match
Author:Irvine Welsh
Create image

“The American dream is about achieving happiness. When you become a fire fighter, a police officer or a teacher or a nurse, you know you're not going to become a billionaire. And what my parents achieved working as a bartender and a maid at a hotel after arriving here with nothing, no education, no money. The first words my dad learned in English where I'm looking for a job.You know what my parents achieved? They owned a home in a safe and stable neighborhood. They retired with dignity and they left all four of their children better off than themselves.”

ChildrenHomeDreamParentTeacherAchieveDadDignityPoliceMy DadFighterHotelNeighborhoodNurseAmerican DreamRetiredBillionaireNo MoneyPolice OfficerBartender
Author:Marco Rubio
Create image

“The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you're a bartender in the tavern of life. Don't get too comfortable and don't really listen to anybody else. Don't stand around with a bunch of writers and talk about writing. You know when you see plumbers at a plumbers convention, usually they're not talking about plumbing: they're talking about whatever it is that two men happen to talk about. They're talking about sports, their wives and children. I just tell my students, don't talk about writing too much, just go out and do it. Find out whatever you need to get to the mainland.”

MenWritingChildrenSportsWifeStudentsHumbleBe HumblePlumberBartenderPlumbing
Author:James McBride
Create image