8 Quotes by Joe Ducie

Becoming a writer is a polite way of saying you've chosen alcoholism as a career.

Commercial fiction writing – where my bread is buttered – is fairly straightforward. The writing is simply efficiency and story. The more you have of one the less you need of the other.

Perfect endings... they don’t exist, ‘Phie. Only in stories, where nothing ever really changes. Here, right now, isn’t a story. There is no happy ending, because it’s not the end. Do you understand?

Sometime later, halfway between midnight and dawn, I fell asleep with my head against the polished mahogany and my hand clutching a bottle full of nothing but blue dregs and the morning’s regret.

Did you see a future for us, Tal?” I asked, but she only stared. “Did you see us waking up together? Smiling in the morning? Did you see us laughing and growing old? Did you see me loving you even more for every morning as the years flew past?” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Boy, I sure did.

Annie and I had spun together across worlds and universes and dreams. But the chaos had swallowed her whole, absorbed her warmth, and scattered us apart as easily as we had spun, intoxicated, together.

I think certain people resonate in our lives, and no matter how much time or how many worlds stand between us, we often gravitate back to those same people. Call it a weak sort of fate, magnets at the right polarity, but years, distance – even death – were no match to whatever near-inconceivable force I felt at that moment, sitting with Tia at her bar and sipping rocket fuel.

Becoming a writer is a polite way of saying you’ve chosen alcoholism as a career.