Cafe Society Quotes

Las Vegas: It was not cafe society, it was Nescafe society.

I guess I´m too used to sitting in a small room and making words do a few things. I see enough of humanity at the racetracks, the supermarkets, gas stations, freeways, cafes, etc. This can´t be helped. But I feel like kicking myself in the ass when I go to gatherings, even if the drinks are free. It never works for me. I´ve got enough clay to play with. People empty me. I have to get away to refill. I´m what´s best for me, sitting here slouched, smoking a beedie and watching this creen flash the words. Seldom do you meet a rare or interesting person. It´s more than galling, it´s a fucking constant shock. It´s making a god-damned grouch out of me. Anybody can be a god-damned grouch and most are. Help!

Its magnificence was indescribable, and its magnitude was inconceivable. She felt overwhelmed in the presence of its greatness. Pg 87

Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).

Why are you perpetuating a childhood you grew up despising?

Someone has to unbutton the stuffed shirts of the beau monde.

I felt that the magical people must be in the hidden back roads and dusty cubby holes of life; on highways, in hostels, and in shabby, smoky cafes. These enchanting people are in trees, around fires and under hand-knit hats and street lamps reflecting gold on rain soaked pavement. They dance while others dangle; they vibrantly sing the songs that get jumbled and stuck in the subconscious of others who only wish to catch tune. They are the rare ones whose uncommon experiences touch your heart through just a wink of their eye, the stories stitched in the holes of their shoes, invoking a longing for the unknown, taking others to a place of missing what they've never even had -- they do not settle, they do not compromise.

Well-functioning cafes make a significant contribution to the mental health of their communities.

I love America for its bourgeois comfort. If I was as heavily in debt as they are, I wouldn't be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water from an old bottle and serving others tea or coffee in a cafe somewhere.

The continent has embraced a spiritual death long before the demographic one. In those seventeen European countries that have fallen into the "lowest-low fertility," where are the children? In a way, you're looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe listening to his iPod, the eternal adolescent charges of the paternalistic state. The government makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection...the long-term cost of welfare is the infantilization of the population. The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latter-day Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in.

But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?" "What?" "People don't talk about anything." "Oh, they must!" "No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming-pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it's only colour and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That's all there is now.

The autumn was a happy time. The crops around the countryside were good, and over at the Forks Falls market the price of tobacco held firm that year. After the long hot summer the first cool days had a clean bright sweetness. Goldenrod grew along the dusty roads, and the sugar cane was ripe and purple. The bus came each day from Cheehaw to carry a few of the younger children to the consolidated school to get an education. Boys hunted foxes in the pinewoods, winter quilts were aired out on the wash lines, and sweet potatoes bedded in the ground with straw against the colder months to come. In the evening, delicate shreds of smoke rose from the chimneys, and the moon was round and orange in the autumn sky. There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall. Sometimes, late in the night when there was no wind, there could be heard in the town the thin wild whistle of the train that goes through Society City on its way far off to the North.

the one with the lower rate. A few unique things to see in Stockholm include the Nobelmuseet, the Nobel Museum, which tells of the creation of the Nobel Prize and the creativity of its laureates, and the Spiritmuseet, where you can learn about the nation’s complicated relationship with alcohol. Sweden is associated with design (and not just Ikea) and many shops sell Swedish‐only design. Oudoor activities in summer include hiking trails through the islands and archipelago. Winter activities stretch to cross‐country skiing, ice skating and snow hiking. Nightlife is expensive, cover charges to bars can be high and, bizarrely, the minimum age for drinking varies in an arbitrary fashion as it is up to each establishment to make its own decision – it can be anything from 17 to 27. So take identification with you. There are two airports serving Stockholm. Arlanda is 40 kms north of the city and serves main airlines. Skavsta, 100 kms to the south, serves the budget airlines. Both airports have coaches to take visitors directly to the city centre. Downside: Many independently owned restaurants and cafes close for holidays between July and August which can limit the range of places to eat. To read: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. This trilogy of a financial journalist and the tattooed genius with a motive to fight the dark right‐wing forces of Swedish society romped through the bestseller lists.

But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?" "What?" "People don't talk about anything." "Oh, they must!" "No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming-pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it's only colour and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That's all there is now.

I sensed the unsettling aura, the stillness giving way to silent pandemonium of a crowd that could no longer be seen—the nights of posh black-tie parties, laughter and scandal, champagne and cigarettes long since gone.

America’s professional and managerial elites have little interest in the broad middle class of our society and have weak ties to nation and place.

The British dominion over Egyptian governments the French dominion over Egyptian society continued evesn as Oscar sat in those Egyptian cafes, eating his basboussa and not thinking very many decolonial thoughts.

The poor live on society's scraps--a few dollars in government assistance or charity, donated food, thrift-store clothes. They can afford neither transport to venture out of their communities nor simple luxuries such as movies or a cup of coffee with friends in a cafe. They cannot afford to vary the routines of their daily lives. Embarrassed by their poverty, worried about being judged failures in life, humiliated by that judgement, many told me they have essentially withdrawn from all but the most necessary, unavoidable social interactions,

A few hours later I realize the quarterly meeting is still dull, but it’s moving in the right direction. It’s only been three months since the last meeting, but Gabe’s already implemented a few changes to make it more useful for everyone. We don’t have any surveys to fill out today—thank goodness—so I’m taking my usual notes and following along. Even Preston is awake and paying attention. Sort of. “I have to pee, Sandy. I’m not gonna make it till the lunch break,” Preston whispers. He’s been fidgeting for ten minutes. I wish he’d just go already. “So go,” I say in a low whisper. “We’re not captives.” “You know I hate doing the walk of shame during a meeting,” he whispers disdainfully. I shake my head. “For the hundredth time, that is not what ‘walk of shame’ means.” “No one should be ashamed of getting it on with a hot stranger, Sandy. That is not shameworthy.” He shakes his head in disgust. “People should high-five in the morning and go home with their heads held high.” “What do you suggest it be called then? If we as a society should be proud of our one-night stands we need to have a term for it.” “I’m trying to get ‘walk of satisfaction’ to catch on, but it’s hard to make something go viral.” “Uh-huh

São vários os orfãos dos cafés. Quem os frequentou e perdeu abrigo, mas, sobretudo, quem busca em vão um domicílio para a sua relação com a cidade.

Someone has to unbutton the stuffed shirts of the beau monde.

Oh good, the Algonquin Twit isn’t here.

An air of malaise had spread through Café Society and quite acutely in her coterie, friends impatient to find their way to the lightness, their place in the sun. The Great Depression cast shadows on the city. The roar of the Twenties had quieted to a soulful cry of the blues.

Le café (...) est un lieu de rendez-vous, c'est un espace ouvert, extérieur. C'est un endroit où l'on peut aussi venir seul, pour travailler, lire, mais où cette solitude est souvent interrompue par le passage de connaissances. S'installer au café témoigne d'une sorte de disposition à la rencontre

So society says it's great to be big. But being big can take away from the specialness... The growth thing, it's like a cafe. You open up a really cool little organic vegetarian cafe, and there's a certain type of people that come to it and you really bond with them. And then it gets popular and you wonder if you should make it bigger or open up another one. It's a question of knowing when to stop, knowing when you lose what you had originally.