Quotes From "Barneys Version" By Mordecai Richler

1
I don't hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I've mentioned with the essence. Mordecai Richler
2
When a child is born, I once explained to the kids, some dads lay down bottles of wine for them that will mature when they grow up into ungrateful adults. Instead, what you're going to get from me, as each of you turns sixteen, is a library of the one hundred books that gave me the most pleasure when I was a know-nothing adolescent. Mordecai Richler
3
Following the death of his wife, Sam Johnson wrote to the Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton, "I have ever since seemed to myself broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wilds of life, without any certain direction, or fixed point of view: a gloomy gazer on a world to which I have little relation." But my wife wasn't dead, merely absent. Mordecai Richler
4
Better my right hand should have been cut off. Go know I was setting in motion events that would lead to the ruin of one of the few truly good men I ever met. Mordecai Richler
5
...and then I began to drift, fighting tears. I used to come here with Miriam. Miriam, my heart's desire. What was troubling her this morning? Maybe Kate had reproached her on the phone for leaving me? How dare Kate. Oh yeah? Go for it, my darling. Remind her of what she's missing. No, don't. Mordecai Richler
6
Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect. Mordecai Richler
7
In a nutshell, I am not unaware of my failings. Neither am I a stranger to irony. Mordecai Richler
8
But the truth is, nothing delights me more than a biography of one of the truly great that proves he or she was an absolute shit. Mordecai Richler
9
And what if Miriam and I were never to be reconciled? Mordecai Richler
10
But I hate being a grandfather. It's indecent. In my mind's eye, I'm still twenty-five. Thirty-three max. Certainly not sixty-seven, reeking of decay and dashed hopes. My breath sour. My limbs in dire need of a lube job. And now that I've been blessed with a plastic hip-socket replacement, I'm no longer even biodegradable. Environmentalists will protest my burial. Mordecai Richler
11
All the same, it strikes me as unfair that I still have to defend myself against her moral judgements. My continuing need for her approbation is pathetic. Twice now I have stopped myself on the street to remonstrate with her, a crazy old coot talking to himself. Mordecai Richler
12
We could never agree about Boogie and I didn't share Miriam's reverence for professors. In fact, just in case I haven't mentioned it before, the pride of my office wall is my framed high-school graduation certificate, lit from above. Miriam has reproached me for it. "Take it down, darling, " she once pleaded. But it still hangs there. Mordecai Richler
13
...if I were an angel of the Lord, I would mark the doors of each of my children's homes with an X, so that plague and misfortune would pass over them. Alas, I lack the qualifications. So when there was still world and time enough I fretted. I nagged. I corrected. I got everything wrong. Mordecai Richler
14
One final thought. In the years leading up to my trial, whenever I was caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway leading to my cottage, creeping along behind a battered, rust eaten pick-up truck with a sticker on its rear bumper that read JESUS SAVES, I used to think don't count on it, buster. Now I am no longer sure. Mordecai Richler