After dinner, I said, “Would you like to go somewhere beautiful?” She looked at me as if I was mad. “More beautiful than this?” She was hooked, and so was I.

I had been friendly with Roslyn for quite a few years.

“It’s Syriac,” he said. “It’s the script used by the Nabataeans over two thousand years ago.”

Unsurprisingly, music has played a central role in my life. Music can be emotional, erotic, transcendent, hypnotic and, in some cases, downright terrible.

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” she said, eyeing me. “No,” I replied. “I’m a bullshit artist.”
—

“Line up against that wall” said the Captain to my uncle Fred. “Platoon. Get ready, take aim…”
—

She was a head taller than everyone else, and moved like a real thoroughbred. If anyone truly belonged at Belmont, it was she.
—

“What’s that black circle?” I asked the technician while looking at the ghostly images on the screen.
—

She said, “If I would have come here 9 months ago, someone would have shot at me.”
—

“I wish this boat would stop rocking so much,” I groaned to myself as I opened my eyes and looked in the bathroom mirror.
—

“Goodbye” I said with a smile as I stepped over the two bodies twitching on the ground.
—

“Aren’t you Morag and Elspeth from Arbroath?”
—

I was given a key to the senior executive washroom, allowing me to pee alongside the big shots in the store. What a thrill.
—

“You’re going to see that wee, fat conceited bastard?” said the owner. “Why?”
—

“You won’t find a hotel room anywhere for the next 300 miles.”
—

“Roy, would you do me a favor? Can you visit Sammy in Rikers Island?
—

(or: How Adolf Hitler Bought Me a Jaguar)
—

“God bless you honey, God bless you”, said Alberta Hunter to my mother.
—

“If you touch me again,” I yelled, “I will kill you”— and I meant it.
—

“It was the Armani coat that sealed the deal,” said Mike Creek. “What Armani coat?” I asked.
—

Drescher, in her distinctive nasal Queens, New York twang gratefully came back with, “Thank you so much; I love meeting my fans.”
—

As he lay down in bed, my father noticed a window set high up on the wall. This was odd as the window to the outside was on the opposing wall.
—

He led us through some corridors and into a courtyard. He pointed to a wrecked Ferrari sports car and proudly said, “Look, accident!”
—