Neil Strauss · 431 pages
Rating: (25.5K votes)
“On Ecstasy, Joan Rivers looks like Pamela Anderson, so imagine what Pamela Anderson looked like.”
“Looking down on it from the helicopter, with a bottle of Jack in my left hand, a bag of pills in my right hand, and a blond head bobbing up and doen in my lap, I felt like the king of the world.”
“There was one dude in a jeans jacket who I swear to God shit in his pants when all of a sudden I was inches away from his face playing drums in the air.”
“I've already spent ten years of my life apologizing for that band. As their manager, that's all I really did. Apologize. For years afterward I'd walk into a hotel lobby and the receptionist would call to me, 'Mr. McGhee.' And I'd run up and drop to my knees and say, 'Oh, Jesus, I'm really sorry.'
They'd look at me funny and say, 'No, nothing's wrong. You have a telephone call.'
And I'd breathe a sigh of relief and thank the good Lord above that I wasn't managing Mötley Crüe anymore.
~ Doc McGhee.”
“There were always blind, deaf, or handicapped people hanging around the brothers, and I figured it was evidence that they either had a soft, compassionate side or were running some kind of mysterious scam.”
“The angry man will defeat Himself in battle As well as in life.”
“We thought we had elevated animal behavior to an art form. But then we met Ozzy.”
“But what everybody always loved Mötley Crüe for was being a fucking decadent band: for being able to walk in a room and inhale all the alcohol, girls, pills, and trouble in sight.”
“I announced to everyone that I was embarking on a solo tour. Not a music tour, but a tour of drugs and prostitutes.”
“I just wanted peace and quiet. So I waded into the ocean with a bellar in my hand. The waves were cold and kept smacking my clothes, higher and higher, until they knocked my drink out of my hand. Soon, my hair was wet and sticking to the back of my neck. Then I blacked out.”
“If there’s one genetic trait that automatically disqualifies a man from being able to rock, it’s curly hair. Nobody cool has curly hair; people like Richard Simmons, the guy from Greatest American Hero, and the singer from REO Speedwagon have curls. The only exceptions are Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople, whose hair is more tangled than curly, and Slash, but his hair is fuzzy and that’s cool.”
“Did you get your presents from me?" I asked.
"Nikki." Doc grimaced. "You're sick. I answered the door, and there were two girls in Nazi outfits and a nun. What's wrong with you?"
"Fuck, Doc. I was just having fun. How about you, Mr. Udo? Did you enjoy your gifts?"
"My wife is like my air," he said.
"Huh?"
"Without her, I cannot live, She is my air."
I stood there feeling like a giant prick. I had tried to contaminate his air.”
“I understood then why rock stars have such big egos: from the stage, the world is just one faceless, shirtless, obedient mass, as far as the eye can see.”
“Fate, however, has a way of finding your vulnerabilities where you least expect them, illuminating them so that you realize how glaringly obvious they are, and then mercilessly driving a spike straight into their most delicate center.”
“Nowadays, I don’t believe in the Christian concept of a God who created people for the sole purpose of judging and punishing them. After all, if one of the commandments is “Thou shalt not kill,” does that make God a hypocrite when he does things like flooding the world or destroying Sodom and Gomorrah?”
“But, unlike us, Ozzy had a restraint, a limit, a conscience, a brake. And that restraint came in the form of a homely, rotund little British woman whose very name sets lips trembling and knees knocking: Sharon Osbourne, a shitkicker and disciplinarian like no other we had ever met, a woman whose presence could in an instant send us reeling back to our childhood fear of authority.”
“Those words—“Trust me, I’m a junkie”—should have been a clue right there.”
“A funny thing about girls, though, is that the more you do wrong, the more they like you.”
“The Earl and Countess of Langford!"
That announcement caused an immediate reaction among the inhabitants of the ballroom, who began looking at one another in surprise and then turned to the balcony, but it was nothing compared to the reaction among the small group of seven people who'd been keeping a vigil of hope. A jolt went through the entire group; hands reached out blindly and were clasped tightly by other hands; faces lifted to the balcony, while joyous smiles dawned brightly and eyes misted with tears.
Attired in formal black evening clothes with white waistcoat and frilled white shirt, Stephen Westmoreland, Earl of Langford, was walking across the balcony. On his arm was a medieval princess clad in a pearl-encrusted ivory satin gown with a low, square bodice that tapered to a deep V at the waist. A gold chain with clusters of diamonds and pearls in each link rode low on her hips, sawying with each step, and her hair tumbled in flaming waves and heavy curls over her shoulders and back.”
“And there, in the midst of blinding orange, yellow, and white flames, our forever begins.”
“I missed that he could toss me around like a rag doll, while at the same time worshipping me like I was the most precious object in the world to him. We”
“In a lot of ways, having a teenager isn't all that different from having a newborn. You learn to read the reactions, because they're incapable of saying exactly what it is that's causing pain.”
“On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.
That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me that is was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.”
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