Quotes from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie

Billy O'Connor ·  310 pages

Rating: (28 votes)


“I tried to drown my demons with whiskey, but I found out real devils can swim.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie


“I skipped two short steps and walloped the back of his head with an energy-charged swing of the pipe. The street collided with his jaw.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie


“The longer the wars, the younger the men who must finish them.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie


“In Nam, the jungle's heat was heavy, and like a spoiled overweight child, it insisted on being carried everywhere.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie


“I crashed the pipe murderously down onto his mouth and heard his upper teeth shatter at the gums.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie



“The silence became palpable and merciless in its depths. The only sound came from my car’s radio. The Temptations towed me to tears.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie


“The guys I owed were serious people. I was so busy raising cash; I barely had time to ignore my creditors.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie


“My old man left Ireland's stone, green fields to migrate to the glass, concrete canyons of New York in 1950.”
― Billy O'Connor, quote from Confessions of a Bronx Bookie


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About the author

Billy O'Connor
Born place: in County Cork, Ireland
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Popular quotes

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“For years I had known joy in nothing but victories, and now I felt myself a boy again. When I had wished to climb the Great Keep, it had never occurred to me that the Great Keep itself might wish to climb the sky; I knew better now. But this ship at least was climbing beyond the sky, and I wanted to climb with her.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun


“The talk here makes me quite ill. I would rather we had never come together again; then at least we might still have preserved a memory. In vain do I try to picture all these fellows in dirty uniforms again, and this Konersmann’s restaurant as a canteen in the rest area. It cannot be done. The things here are stronger—the things that differentiate us from one another are too powerful. The common interest is no longer decisive. It has broken up already and given place to the interest of the individual. Now and then something still will shine through from that other time when we all wore the same rig, but already it is dwindled and dim. These others here are still our comrades and yet our comrades no longer—that is what is so sad. All else went west in the war, but comradeship we did believe in; now only to find that what death could not do, life is achieving; it is driving us asunder.”
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“she could have dropped you both off. whar's the worst she can do? cry hysterically?"
the gears on the ute get stuck at the lights and will pushes tom's hand out of the way and and shoves it into the correct gear.
"it wasn't her" he mutters after a moment.
"sorry?" tom says.
"she didn't cry"
"then what?"
it's too quiet except for the quiet for the crap engine sounding like a lawn mower.
"i cried"
luca bursts out laughing beside will.
"yeah, well i did" will says. "And it's not the thing you want to do in front of a bunch on engineers.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son


“But once you allow yourself to think that there are some people, because of their race, their color, or religion, who are really not human beings you have established a justification for imposing every sort of humiliation on them.”
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