Dirty Martini Quotes

Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't.

She was indeed the literature I thought she would be, on par with excellence and not-so-readable.

I figured if more people made an effort to be friendly, the world would be a much better place.

That's the thing about love, though. If you never open yourself up to the risk of being hurt, you'll never give someone the chance to get close enough to love you back.

I didn’t want to be somebody’s tonight. Not even his. I wanted to be someone’s tomorrow.

Your presence resembles a dirty martini, she only drinks it when she’s thirsty.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~ Lao Tzu

Every word she uttered set fire in me, and I was falling for her. I started wanting her, and I didn’t know what kind of sign it was. She was a secret covered with skin, and her eyes were flitting to and from my heart. She was the enigma whose beauty lay in the mystery, the one you would rather leave unsolved.

she had shed her old skin that was raw and she has transformed into a person so different from the general. She was bold, well learned, and a phoenix that grew out of ashes.

Now I was drowning in feelings. So I’d drown those fuckers in whiskey.

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

Lying there, feeling safe in his tight embrace, a tear escaped my resolute eye and darkened his purple shirt. I usually do not cry when I am afraid, but invariably did when I felt safe and cocooned, like I felt in the confines of his strong, sure arms.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Marie Curie

Personally, I wouldn’t mind Alzheimer’s. You buy one magazine, and you’re entertained for the rest of your life.

My loneliness is a choice, not a situation.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” ~ Rumi

She had slowly encroached on every inch of my being, and occupied a lot of space on my mind. Her jet black hair that fell in wisps across her cheeks, the murky eyes that find my soul every time, her long fingers that threaded with mine and the way she held my hand till our fingertips every time I had to leave… Preethi was on my mind, here to stay.

That’s the thing about love, though. If you never open yourself up to the risk of being hurt, you’ll never give someone the chance to get close enough to love you back.

But now, I am addicted to the peace and calm of being alone. There is something so soothing about solitude that I have no urgent wish to give it up and connect with people.

If someone asked me if I liked him, Yes! If someone asked me if it was love, Jeez, no! Being offered sex with him, I’d say ‘hell, yeah!’.

I wanted to scream at those with the probing stares. “Stop calling me a loser! The way I live life is my choice.” But I stop short, fearing being labelled a psychopath.

Are you a virgin by any chance?” he asked me once. “Do I look like a bottle of olive oil by any chance, Raghu?” I countered and chuckled.

Mathematics may not teach us how to add love or how to minus hate. But it gives every reason to hope that every problem has a solution.” ~ Anonymous

Own it,

Fucking feelings. Always making things complicated.

My friends all raised their glasses. “To love. Whether between friends, or lovers, or both, may we all experience it in abundance.

Nerds rule the world,

Math is like love—a simple idea, but it can get complicated.” ~ Anonymous

Seriously, sometimes I have to pinch myself. Whatever I did in this life to deserve you I have no idea. But I’m hoping God doesn’t realize the mistake anytime soon. You really are the best.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” ~Albert Schweitzer

Hey! How about a coffee?” I pinged her after a few days since our chat. “Nope!” she replied quickly, and that was awkward. “Oh!” I managed to respond, just to keep the conversation going. “I mean...” she kept typing and my heart started pounding even faster, expecting a worse reply “I prefer beer.

Virginity – the worst word mankind had ever created! I have a mix of friends, a few who think virginity is divinity, and a few who think it is a lack of opportunities. A few say that it is a matter of choice and they chose to have pleasure. A few others think it is important to wait so that a relationship feels fulfilled.

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

The translucent, golden punch tastes velvety, voluptuous and not off-puttingly milky. Under its influence, I stage a party for my heroines in my imagination, and in my flat. It's less like the glowering encounter I imagined between Cathy Earnshaw and Flora Poste, and more like the riotous bash in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Not everyone is going to like milk punch. So there are also dirty martinis, and bagels and baklava, and my mother's masafan, Iraqi marzipan. The Little Mermaid is in the bath, with her tail still on, singing because she never did give up her soaring voice. Anne Shirley and Jo March are having a furious argument about plot versus character, gesticulating with ink-stained hands. Scarlett is in the living room, her skirts taking up half the space, trying to show Lizzy how to bat her eyelashes. Lizzy is laughing her head off ut Scarlett has acquired a sense of humour, and doesn't mind a bit. Melanie is talking book with Esther Greenwood, who has brought her baby and also the proofs of her first poetry collection. Franny and Zooey have rolled back the rug and are doing a soft shoe shuffle in rhinestone hats. Lucy Honeychurch is hammering out some Beethoven (in this scenario I have a piano. A ground piano. Well, why not?) Marjorie Morningstar is gossiping about directors with Pauline and Posy Fossil. They've come straight from the shows they're in, till in stage make-up and full of stories. Petrova, in a leather aviator jacket, goggles pushed back, a chic scarf knotted around her neck, is telling the thrilling story of her latest flight and how she fixed an engine fault in mid-air. Mira, in her paint-stained jeans and poncho, is listening, fascinated, asking a thousand questions. Mildred has been persuaded to drink a tiny glass of sherry, then another tiny glass, then another and now she and Lolly are doing a wild, strange dance in the hallway, stamping their feet, their hair flying wild and electric. Lolly's cakes, in the shape of patriarchs she hates, are going down a treat. The Dolls from the Valley are telling Flora some truly scandalous and unrepeatable stories, and she is firmly advising them to get rid of their men and find worthier paramours. Celie is modelling trousers of her own design and taking orders from the Lace women; Judy is giving her a ten-point plan on how to expand her business to an international market. She is quite drunk but nevertheless the plan seems quite coherent, even if it is punctuated by her bellowing 'More leopard print, more leopard print!' Cathy looks tumultuous and on the edge of violent weeping and just as I think she's going to storm out or trash my flat, Jane arrives, late, with an unexpected guest. Cathy turns in anticipation: is it Heathcliff? Once I would have joined her but now I'm glad it isn't him. It's a better surprise. It's Emily's hawk. Hero or Nero. Jane's found him at last, and has him on her arm, perched on her glove; small for a bird of prey, he is dashing and patrician looking, brown and white, observing the room with dark, flinty eyes. When Cathy sees him, she looks at Jane and smiles. And in the kitchen is a heroine I probably should have had when I was four and sitting on my parents' carpet, wishing it would fly. In the kitchen is Scheherazade.

Anne and I were imbibing our second dirty martinis, and she'd ordered hazelnut-encrusted salmon and goat cheese salad while I'd asked for the macaroni with three cheeses and Dungeness crab, comfort food for the well heeled, or those with a paying sister.

I bent over to give my hair another shake, and glanced at my boots, along with the several dozen roaches climbing up them. Then I felt them inside the boots, between the suede and the naked skin of my calves. I

And two more martinis,” Philippe demands. “Insidiously dirty, you charmer.

After the champagne and the Manhattan, I was in danger of bypassing a little tipsy and heading straight for telling inappropriate stories and asking strangers for hugs. Not that I’d ever done that before. Okay, yes I had.

I kissed her because, in that moment, there was nowhere else I’d rather be, nothing else I’d rather be doing. And no one else I’d rather be doing it with.

No way. I’m a guy. We can’t let chicks drive. It’s a form of castration.” “Well, pick up your balls. We’re leaving.

Shepherd is supposed to be a single-minded, unemotional robot boss. Not an actual human with a heart and morning wood. Between the awkward bed-sharing and tingly fake dates, lines are blurring.

So what post-workout beverages can I interest you two in?” “Dirty martini, please,” Emma decided. “I feel like it would be culturally inappropriate of me to drink in Blue Moon without trying a wheat grass shot,” Niko mused. “You could be run

I

How my mind could still fixate on sex when I was struggling to survive, I had no idea.

just

I shiver as I slurp down another oyster. I chewed the first one and almost retched, but now I know to take them down all at once, I’m beginning to like them if I sauce them with enough vinegar. Or maybe I like that I like them. I feel very important when the waiter comes and asks if we’d like anything else and I say, “That’s right, another flight please.” “And two more martinis,” Philippe demands. “Insidiously dirty, you charmer.

It took a special talent to learn absolutely nothing about your job in that amount of time. I asked Sardina about it once, and her reply was jovial. “I like it here. It’s quiet. I can read magazines. Records is considered scut-work, a stepping-stone to other positions. If I did a good job, I’d be promoted out of here. So I don’t do a damn thing.” It made a warped kind of sense.

wouldn’t mind Alzheimer’s. You buy one magazine, and you’re entertained for the rest of your life.

How old is this car?” McGlade asked. “It’s a model made before airbags, isn’t it?” “Just go limp at impact. It’s the same thing.

The guy had issues. More than issues—he had a whole subscription.

how I became an accountant. You really want to know? Well, I can tell you because I remember the exact moment it happened. It’s one of those major life events that stays in your memory like your first kiss, your first introduction to dirty martinis with extra olives, and the first time you discovered the magic of a vibrator.

Don’t act like a protagonist Raghu, be human,” she said. “Like Salman?” I asked and chuckled, she didn’t react though.

The wall of silence that had instantaneously sprung between us was strong, deafening. I could not concentrate, having a sudden surge of emotions about all relationships being mawkish and pointless.

Being with you was like savouring the 5 minute nap after the alarm is snoozed. Something that I had always wanted, something I love, and most importantly, that’s when am in the most composed form having no thoughts about anything, whatsoever! I am in the twilight period where my senses seem awakened but my thoughts were distracted. I was hyper aware of myself, but everything in my surroundings kind of faded off into insignificance. I knew I should come out of it but it felt so comfortable, so necessary.

I held her shoulder blades, caressing the grooves of her ribs, scooping her in my arms and feeling her tense muscles loosen up. She was indeed a dirty martini with a twist.

I felt like a rug had been pulled from under my feet, my head hit hard on the floor and the pain vibrated through my body.

My hands hovered suggestively over her and as her eyes widened, I started tickling her. Her panicked response became raucous laughter and filled the dark silent place with colourful confetti. She responded equally vigorously and it was a few minutes before we tired and fell down on the sofa, slightly apart but really wanting to throw ourselves on the other with blissful abandon.

I wanted to imprint every feature of his into my mind. I want to remember his kisses that calmed the storm in me, pulling me out of confusion instantaneously. I did it all so I could be sure of a throwback memory that would calm me if ever I am in a storm again.

She was a weird combination of many personality traits – obviously not fitting into any of the zodiac stereotypes. She had been a soul filled enigma, irrevocably colouring a few chapters in the otherwise monochrome book of my life in vibrant shades.

I can see the common people, with their halo of self-defined morality (that changes conveniently based on needs), coin a term for me that I don’t quite approve of – Bitch.

What the fuck is a redneck dirty martini?” I sign at him while he continues to grin, running one hand through his dark hair and making it stick up in every direction. “I invented it when I moved here. It’s vodka and pickle juice, and I give it five stars.” Jesus, fuck.

Everly, you have the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. And I’m about to ask you to give it to me, forever. All I have to give you in return is mine, which, to be perfectly honest, isn’t enough. But I love you with every bit of it—with every piece of my soul. Will you marry me?

And ran like we were being chased by zombie clowns.

He looked like he belonged on a fresco of Greek gods doing naughty things with humans, not mixing dirty martinis in a dive bar.

The order, for completists, is WHISKEY SOUR, BLOODY MARY, RUSTY NAIL, DIRTY MARTINI, FUZZY NAVEL, CHERRY BOMB, SHAKEN, and STIRRED. She’s been the subject of many shorts (JACK DANIELS STORIES, BURNERS, FLOATERS) and has appeared as a supporting character in many of my other novels (SHOT OF TEQUILLA, THE LIST, SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT, BANANA HAMMOCK, FLEE, SPREE, THREE, TIMECASTER SUPERSYMMETRY). Due to popular demand, she’ll be back again in another novel, LAST CALL, being co-written with Blake Crouch.

Hendrick’s martini, extra dirty with three olives,

We’re going home and I’m going to fuck the shit out of you when we get there.

There was the part where he was a robot with no feelings. At least, that was what I tried to tell myself as I fell prey to his hypnotic gaze and man-heaven scent.

Nora shrugged. “I went out with Max again, but I think I’m over it.” “But you guys have only been seeing each other for a month or so,” I said. “I thought you really liked him.” “He’s not bad,” she said. “But if I keep going out with him, he’s going to get attached. I do not want that happening.” “Would it be so terrible to have a real relationship?” I asked. “I’m just not interested,” she said. “I like my life the way it is. A man would only complicate things.

Mmm. Pickles and a dirty martini.

There won’t be any better revenge than making him want you.

marriage is an archaic institution. A legally binding contract between two people to stay together for life? It’s completely unrealistic. Move her in with you. Let her play house if that’s what she wants. But for god’s sake, don’t get married.

When had my mom gotten so bitter? She’d never been warm and nurturing—not even when Ethan and I were kids—but she’d seemed to reject her life as a wife and mother more vehemently as the years went by. And I was so much like her.

The consequences of letting go were never worth it.

Of course you don’t need men,” Nora said. “But they’re very nice to have around. They can fix things, and lift things that are heavy. And

Plus, my mother likes to push marriage on me as if it’s a financial investment, not a lifetime commitment that really ought to have something to do with love. You should have seen the fit she threw when she found out my best friend Everly was marrying a wealthy man. Apparently that should have been me and she couldn’t fathom how I could have let that opportunity pass me by.

sweet but still tough,

I loved the way he looked at me. He’d never once made me feel self-conscious about my curves. In fact, I’d never felt sexier.

the one guy was oddly persuasive. He kind of scared me but also turned me on a little bit.

still felt the buzz of adrenaline flooding my system, but running gave me something to do with all that energy.

It was one thing if a woman wanted your dick in her face. Quite another if she didn’t.

Relationships are the most transformational space, whether it’s with your children, your parents, or your loved ones, because you can’t control the other person.” ~ Neil Strauss

I'd never given it a lot of thought, but sharing a bed was awfully intimate. There was a certain vulnerability to it. Shepherd was an exceedingly private person, and he never made decisions without careful consideration. The fact that he trusted me enough for this was oddly touching.

The band started a new song and I pulled Everly close. I lifted her chin and leaned down, kissing her. Not because we were supposed to. Not to sell everyone in the room on the veracity of our relationship. I kissed her because, in that moment, there was nowhere else I’d rather be, nothing else I’d rather be doing. And no one else I’d rather be doing it with.

Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite.” ~ Roberto Bolaño

Wilde