Bartender Quotes

“If Jesus was a bartender, He would still only be half as cool as Carlos.”
― Richard Kadrey, Kill the Dead

“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?”
― Michael Thomas Ford, Suicide Notes

“There has ling been a happy symbiotic relationship between kitchen and bar. Simply put, the kitchen wants booze, and the bartender wants food.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“Handsome guy, Victor, in a brutal, black-Irish way. Like most New York bartenders, he was really an actor, or was it the reverse? ("Novelty")”
― John Crowley, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now

“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")”
― Cornell Woolrich, The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich

“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.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones, Guru In The Glass: A Mysterious Encounter While Dying To Live The Unlived Life

“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.”
― Stephen King, The Shining

“He took her mouth in a deep kiss. Finally he let her up for air.

Don’t propose. Don’t propose. Don’t propose. He repeated the words until he was sure he wasn’t going to say something crazy.”
― Erin Nicholas, My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“While the drinks may be complimentary at an open bar, the service isn't. Remember to tip the bartenders, waiters, and waitresses who are working hard to keep your experience enjoyable.”
― Jason Langella

“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.”
― Jennifer Baumgardner, Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics

“From the book - "Just because you can't see them, doesn't mean their are not there!”
― Z.Z. LaFourche, Between The Shoals

“Fighting a Mardi-Gras-In-New-Orleans crowd for eight blocks from Trahan’s Tavern on St. Peter to Bourbon O on Bourbon was like a man being willing to swim the Nile, climb Mount Everest, and cross the Sahara for true love.”
― Erin Nicholas, My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“Integers 1 to 10 walk into a bar, and are soon appalled at the bartender's math when he asks them for their order.”
― Rajesh`

“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.”
― David Lipan

“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.”
― Ruby Tandoh, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now