The Tender Bar Quotes

“While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“I don't know. Sometimes I try to say what's on my mind and it comes out sounding like I ate a dictionary and I'm shitting pages. Sorry”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown.”
― J R Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“I began dividing life in absolutes... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it. ”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Of course many bars in Manhasset, like bars everywhere, were nasty places, full of pickled people marinating in regret.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. What’s it about? Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It’s about words. It’s about a man dealing with life. Okay?”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Do you know why God invented writers? Because he loves a good story. And he doesn't give a damn about the words. Words are the curain we've hung between him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don't strin for the perfect sentence. There's no such thing. Writing si guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the readers as much as yours.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“It takes just as many men to build a sturdy man, son, as it does to build a tower. You will look back on this time and remember remarkably little of it, excpt the extent to which I tried or did not try.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“People just don't understand how many men it takes to build one good man. Next time you're in Manhattan and you see one of those mighty skyscrapers going up, pay attention to how many men are engaged in the enterprise. It takes just as many men to build a sturdy man, son, as it does to build a tower.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“We went there for everything we needed. We went there when thirsty, of course, and when hungry, and when dead tired. We went there when happy, to celebrate, and when sad, to sulk. We went there after weddings and funerals, for something to settle our nerves, and always for a shot of courage just before. We went there when we didn't know what we needed, hoping someone might tell us. We went there when looking for love, or sex, or trouble, or for someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Did you read where the great-grandson of Nathan Hale got married this weekend? Give me liberty or give me death. That’s what the groom will be saying in about one month.”
― J R Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“[G]randma was always afraid of something. She set aside time each day for dread. And not nameless dread. She was quite specific about the various tragedies stalking her. She feared pneumonia, muggers, riptides, meteors, drunk drivers, drug addicts, serial killers, tornadoes, doctors, unscrupulous grocery clerks, and the Russians. The depth of Grandma’s dread came home to me when she bought a lottery ticket and sat before the tv as the numbers were called. After her first three numbers were a match, she began praying feverishly that she wouldn’t have the next three. She dreaded winning, for fear that her heart would give out.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“One old bourbon drinker told me that a man’s life is all a matter of mountains and caves—mountains we must climb, caves where we hide when we can’t face our mountains.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“Fear will be the fuel for all your success, and the root cause of all your failures, and the underlying dilemma in every story you tell yourself about yourself. And the only chance you’ll have against fear? Follow it. Steer by it. Don’t think of fear as the villain. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder—your Natty”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“Why couldn't my mother and I figure out how it was done? My mother deserved a home. It didn't even need to be a mansion, just a little cottage with a rose garden and cream colored curtains and rugs that were soft and clean and kissed your bare feet as you walked across them. That would be plenty. It mad me mad that my mother didn't have nice things, madder still that I couldn't provide them for her, and furious that I couldn't say any of this aloud, because my mother was striving to be upbeat. Taking care of my mother meant saying nothing to disrupt her fragile optimism, so I would press my forehead against the window, harder until it hurt, and shift my focus from the mansions to my reflection in the glass.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“I looked around the barroom. Someone else might have seen nothing more than a random crowd of drinkers, but I saw my people. Kith and kin. Every sort of person was there – stockbrokers and safecrackers, athletes and invalids, mothers and supermodels – but we were as one. We’d all been hurt by something, or somebody, and so we’d all come to Publicans, because misery loves company, but what it really craves is a crowd.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“And because I found it in my youth, the bar was that much more sacred, its image clouded by that special reverence children accord those places where they feel safe. Others might feel this way about a classroom or playground, a theater or church, a laboratory or library or stadium. Even a home. But none of these places claimed me. We exalt what is at hand. Had I grown up beside a river or an ocean, some natural avenue of self-discovery and escape, I might have mythologized it. Instead I grew up 142 steps from a glorious old American tavern, and that has made all the difference.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Tienes que hacer todo lo que te asuste, JR. Todo. No digo que pongas en peligro tu vida, pero todo lo demás, sí. Piensa en el miedo, decide ahora mismo vas a enfrentarte al miedo, porque el miedo va a ser la gran cuestión de tu vida, esto te lo aseguro. El miedo será el combustible de todos tus éxitos y la raíz de todos tus fracasos, y el dilema subyacente en todas las historias que te cuentes a ti mismo sobre ti mismo. ¿Y cuál es la única posibilidad que tienes de vencer el miedo? Ir con él. Pilotar a su lado. No pienses en el miedo como en el malo de la película. Piensa en el miedo como tu guía, en tu explorador de caminos”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“If you think Sigourney Weaver is
sexy then you are a homosexual.”
― J R Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“Your ancestral homeland is Queens, fuckface.”
― J R Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“Angst ist der Schlüssel zum Erfolg und der Hauptgrund für dein Scheitern, Angst ist das zugrunde liegende Dilemma in jeder Geschihte, die du dir über dich selbst erzählst. Und was ist die einzige Chance, die du gegen Angst hast? Folge ihr. Lass dich von ihr leiten.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“great issue of your life, I promise you. Fear will be the fuel for all your success, and the root cause of all your failures, and the underlying dilemma in every story you tell yourself about yourself. And the only chance you’ll have against fear? Follow it. Steer by it. Don’t think of fear as the villain. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder—your Natty Bumppo.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“Just try your best, babe,” she said. “That’s the same thing Mrs. Williams’s contract says,” I complained. “How do I know what my best is?” “Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown.” She didn’t understand. According to my black-or-white view of the world, it wasn’t enough to do my best. I had to be perfect. To take care of my mother, to send her to college, I needed to eliminate all mistakes. Mistakes had led to our predicament—Grandma marrying Grandpa, Grandpa denying my mother’s wish to go to college, my mother marrying my father—and they continued to cost us. I needed to correct those mistakes by avoiding new ones, and by getting perfect grades, then getting into a perfect college, then a perfect law school, then suing my imperfect father. But with school getting harder, I couldn’t see how I was going to be perfect, and if I were imperfect, then my mother and Grandma would be disappointed with me, and I’d be no better than my father, and then my mother would sing and cry and peck at her calculator—this was how my mind raced on the playground as I watched the other kids playing tetherball.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“All love is based on knowledge, the desire to know, the thrill of being known”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar: A Memoir

“Like nothing else, words organized my world, put order to chaos, divided things neatly into black and white. Words even helped me organize my parents. My mother was the printed word—tangible, present, real—while my father was the spoken word—invisible, ephemeral, instantly part of memory. There was something comforting about this rigid symmetry.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“They’re just—happy.” “About what?” She looked at the men, thinking. “Beer, sweetheart. They’re happy about beer.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“All this searching and longing for the secret of being a good man, and all I needed to do was follow the example of one very good woman.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“I understood that every virtue I associated with manhood—toughness, persistence, determination, reliability, honesty, integrity, guts—my mother exemplified.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“The idea that errors were stepping-stones to truth never once occurred to me,”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar