The Night of the Gun Quotes

“I now inhabit a life I don't deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“As I sit today, I am a genuine, often pleasant person. I am able to imitate a human being for long spurts of time, do solid work for a reputable organization, and have, over the breadth of time, proven to be an attentive father and husband. So how to reconcile my past with my current circumstances? Drugs, it seems to me, do not conjure demons, they access them. Was I faking it then, or am I faking it now? Which, you might ask, of my two selves did I make up?”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“The trick of enjoying New York is not to be so busy grinding your way to the center of the earth that you fail to notice the sparkle of the place, a scale and a kind of wonder that puts all human endeavors in their proper place.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, "Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to Wal-Mart.”
― David carr, The Night of the Gun

“We tell ourselves that we lie to protect others, but the self usually comes out looking damn good in the process.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Some of the burdens we carry include false weight, perhaps to make up for all the horrible stuff we actually did and forgot.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“This is the point where the knowing, irony-infused author laughs along with his readers about his time among the aphorisms, how he was once so gullible and needy that he drank deeply of such weak and fruity Kool-Aid. That's some other book. Slogans saved my life. All of them--the dumb ones, the preachy ones, the imperatives, the cliches, the injunctives, the gooey, Godly ones, the shameless, witless ones.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“If marriage is about deciding to love on a daily basis, I have woken up to a no-brainer every day since.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“[C]ivilians are equally bewildering to the addict. I've watched people drink a glass and a half of wine and push away the rest. What exactly is the point of that?”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Memories are like that. They live between synapses and between the people who hold them. Memories, even epic ones, are perishable from their very formation even in people who don't soak their brains in mood-altering chemicals. There is only so much space on any one person's hard drive, and old memories are prone to replacement by newer ones.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“There is no such thing as a social crack user.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Necessity is a mother.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Most of my stories are not nice ones, their heroic aspects dimmed by the fact that the hand which struck me was my own. Truly ennobling narratives describe a person overcoming the bad hand that fate has dealt him, not someone like me, who takes good cards and sets them on fire.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“It wasn't that I wanted to be a writer; I just didn't want to be stupid.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Most stories about one's past could fairly and adequately be told in a single sentence, and a short one at that: Everyone did the best they could.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“I’m nice—friendly, even—but I am a maniac who simply enjoys the fruits of acting normal.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“The eyes that saw too much because they did not close enough.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“But I've seen enough to know that we all carry a measure of guilt and innocence among us.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“...that explains everything and excuses nothing.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Coming from Minnesota, a land of white people who eat white food in a frequently white landscape, Chocolate City, with its black middle class, political leadership, and cultural legacy was a complete mystery to me.
”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Mornings for an addict involve waking up in a room where everything implicates him. Even if there is no piss or vomit—oh, blessed be the small wonders—there is the tipped-over bottle, the smashed phone, the bright midday light coming through the rip in the shade that says another day has started without you. Drunks and addicts tend to build nests out of the detritus of their misbegotten lives.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“But being an addict means that you never stipulate to being an adult. You may, as the occasion requires, adopt the trade dress of a grown-up, showing responsibility and gravitas in spurts to get by, but the rest of the time, you do what you want when you want.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Drugs, it seems to me, do not conjure demons, they access them. Was I faking it then, or am I faking it now? Which, you might ask, of my two selves did I make up?”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Each sober breath you draw is an act of grace, my friend said. You are making amends every day you do not use. I found enough comfort in what he said to forgive myself…”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Hope is oxygen to someone who is suffocating on despair.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Everyone is told just as much as he needs to know, including the self.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Personal narrative is not simply opening up a vein and letting the blood flow toward anyone willing to stare. The historical self is created to keep dissonance at bay and render the subject palatable in the present.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“When I was very little, my dad would tell me stories about "Billy the Lucky Pup." Billy's doggie buddies were constantly getting in jams, careening toward the brink of something, and Billy would always, always come charging over the hill. With no more than a "ruff, ruff," he would signal that the cavalry had arrived - that Billy was on the case, and disaster had once again been avoided. In those months of relentless havoc, I'd arrive at an odd moment of consideration, and I would think, Where the fuck is that dog, anyway?”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun

“Truth is singular and lies are plural, but history - the facts of what happened is both immutable and mostly unknowable.”
― David Carr, The Night of the Gun