Quotes by Charles Bucke

“Everybody’s got to make a buck”

“But it’s all the little people, Buk, the twenty-five-buck-a-week guys who gave up everything to keep the thing going. The guys with cardboard in their shoes. The guys who slept on the floor.””

“Little brothers are the buck privates of life!””

“Cocktail hour at the embassy consisted of lots of charming men and women in suits and LBDs drinking Buck’s Fizz and being friendly to one another, and so what if half of them had gill slits and dorsal fins under the tailoring, and the embassy smelled of seaweed because it was on an officially derelict oil rig in the middle of the North Sea, and the Other Side has the technical capability to exterminate every human being within two hundred kilometers of a coastline if they think we’ve violated the Benthic Treaty?””

“I went around to four finance companies and borrowed a hundred bucks from each one so we could get married. Then when the collectors came around I persuaded them that they couldn’t find me. One of them that I convinced had my case taken over by his supervisor, who decided not to cooperate with my disappearance and showed up one night at Wagner’s looking for Frank Sheeran. He didn’t know it was me at the door. I said to follow me and I’d take him in to see Mr. Sheeran. He followed me into the bathroom and I gave him a shot to the body and a shot to the jaw and down he went. I didn’t give him the boot or anything. I just wanted to make sure he understood that Mr. Sheeran was too busy to see him that night or any other night. He got the message. Mary had a good job with the Philadelphia””

“one time when we were at the Friendly Lounge they introduced me to Skinny Razor, and I got started doing it on my route. It was easy money, no muscle, strictly providing a service for people who had no credit. This was before credit cards when the people had nowhere to go for a couple of bucks between paychecks.””

“Where's Pip? I want to see Pip. Produce Pip!"”

“November 2, 1984 was an especially tragic day in the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/AIDS epidemic. That was the day Anthony Fauci became the Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (NIAID). (Good Intentions p.128) It was the day a thin-skinned, physically ultra-diminutive man with a legendary Napoleonic attitude was positioned by destiny to become the de facto AIDS Czar. In the fog of culpability that constitutes what could be called "Holocaust II" one thing is clear: the buck, on its way to the very top of the government, at least pauses at the megalomaniac desk of Anthony Fauci.””

“De La Warr reached "James Citty" and made his landing. He entered the fort through the south gate, and, with his colors flying, went on to the church where Reverend Richard Buck delivered an impressive sermon. Then his ensign, Anthony Scott, read his commission, and Gates formally delivered to him his own authority as governor.””

“There is nothing special about us. There are no rules that keep us alive. Everyone dies. But because we are the center of our own story, we feel special, like we will buck the odds, but we’re not and won’t.””

“For all the attacks against meritocracy, there is no other way of organising society than through meritocratic means. And if you’re inclined to disagree, think for a moment about your personal life. Ultimately, when your back is up against the wall, you will want to be operated on by a surgeon or flown by a pilot who graduated at the top of their class and achieved renown in their field through genuine merit – not through a lottery or connections. At some point, particularly when it is a matter of life and death, the buck always stops, and meritocracy always triumphs.””