“What singles Beard out from the mechanized army that clicks across Africa is the same thing that singled out Ahab from the average sea captain — a kind of madness.”

“Blunts have made it fashionable to smoke pot again. Just about no­body in hip hop circles smokes crack or cocaine anymore.”

“Owing to the success of the Rea­gan-Bush crackdown, marijuana prices in New York City have doubled and tripled in recent years, with top-end product selling routinely for $500 an ounce, and up.”

“I tend to take my drugs at exactly the times those PSA films from grade school warned not to: when alone, when depressed, anx­ious, etc. That one can do this with X and live to tell is one of its charms.”

“It’s no accident that many kids start taking drugs at about the same age when children in traditional societies are tossed into a terrifying rite of passage, often involving some freaked-out combination of blood, darkness, self-sufficiency, and secrets.”

"Joey loved the Village as only those who move here from some other where can. He spoke of his Brooklyn home as someone else might speak of Ashtabula."

“Let me tell you about the first time I got high. It was 1966, and I was a young reporter… There, sitting on the floor, were Cree­dence Clearwater Revival and Big Brother and the Holding Company. A huge spliff was passed around… ‘We shouldn’t be doing interviews,’ I shouted. ‘We should be friends.’ ”

“Like other forms of ghetto street culture — graffiti, verbal dueling, rapping­ — breaking is a public arena for the flam­boyant triumph of virility, wit, and skill. In short, of style.”

“It never used to be this way,” Jimmy said, shaking his head. “It just used to be regular bums. You had a bottle under your coat and you slept in hallways. Now you got the young guys and the pills. They go crazy, and they make everybody else crazy.”

“Traveling on the New York subway system is now one of the more frightful experiences Western civilization has to offer on a regular basis. The experience is not only intolerable. It is also a daily advertisement for the brutish sensibilities and shallow brainpans of the people who now control the city.”