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1 " Yeah, tell me I’m a bottle of single malt scotch, she thought. That’s the way to my heart. "
― L.J. Smith , Nightfall (The Vampire Diaries: The Return, #1)
2 " The tavern keeper, a wiry man with a sharp-nosed face, round, prominent ears and a receding hairline that combined to give him a rodentlike look, glanced at him, absentmindedly wiping a tankard with a grubby cloth. Will raised an eyebrow as he looked at it. He'd be willing to bet the cloth was transferring more dirt to the tankard then it was removing. " Drink?" the tavern keeper asked. He set the tankard down on the bar, as if in preparation for filling it with whatever the stranger might order. " Not out of that," Will said evenly, jerking a thumb at the tankard. Ratface shrugged, shoved it aside and produced another from a rack above the bar. " Suit yourself. Ale or ouisgeah?" Ousigeah, Will knew, was the strong malt spirit they distilled and drank in Hibernia. In a tavern like this, it might be more suitable for stripping runt than drinking. " I'd like coffee," he said, noticing the battered pot by the fire at one end of the bar. " I've got ale or ouisgeah. Take your pick." Ratface was becoming more peremptory. Will gestured toward the coffeepot. The tavern keeper shook his head. " None made," he said. " I'm not making a new pot just for you." " But he's drinking coffee," Will said, nodding to one side. Inevitably the tavern keeper glanced that way, to see who he was talking about. The moment his eyes left Will, an iron grip seized the front of his shirt collar, twisting it into a knot that choked him and at the same time dragged him forward, off balance, over the bar,. The stranger's eyes were suddenly very close. He no longer looked boyish. The eyes were dark brown, almost black in this dim light, and the tavern keeper read danger there. A lot of danger. He heard a soft whisper of steel, and glancing down past the fist that held him so tightly, he glimpsed the heavy, gleaming blade of the saxe knife as the stranger laid it on the bar between them. He looked around for possible help. But there was nobody else at the bar, and none of the customers at the tables had noticed what was going on. " Aach...mach co'hee," he choked. The tension on his collar eased and the stranger said softly, " What was that?" " I'll...make...coffee," he repeated, gasping for breath. The stranger smiled. It was a pleasant smile, but the tavern keep noticed that it never reached those dark eyes. " That's wonderful. I'll wait here. "
3 " Jack Kerouac died after throwing up blood. The malt liquor. Then that other guy who shot his wife in the head. Burroughs somebody. And I wonder about literary figures. They're all drunk and staggering and haunting people today, I bet, still muttering and ranting in disassociated lines.Or, I'm wondering about a middle ground with wooly blankets and nubbly cardigans and nobody shot in the head. Where yes, you are uniquely mad. But functionally uniquely mad. Endlessly absorbed but in the mildly scattered kind of way instead of in the crap-I-shot-my-wife-in-the-head kind of way. Unable to dedicate to another human being only in occasional fits.Roald Dahl says you're a fool to become a writer, your only compensation being absolute freedom but then I'm not so sure about that. He bought a wagon from a Romanian gypsy and his kids played in it and I think he had more in the way of compensation than absolute freedom. He's got a point, though, even if he reached a point where his own point no longer applied to him. He had no master except his own soul, and that, he was sure, was why he did it. "
4 " How are things with you, sir?" " Fine." He says it flat." Coffee black. BLT." Now my heart tells me this guy needs more in life, so I take a short. " You ever had a cheese burger with grilled onions and mushrooms on pumpernickel, sir?" That takes a minute to sink in.Then he slaps the counter, grinning. " Bring it on." I sense he needs more." You want a malt with that, by any chance?" He did, of course. " Chocolate," he says, beaming like a kid.Now he's loosening up.It's a privilege to touch humanity in such a fashion. "
5 " There was nothing like the cold, heavy steel of a gun, the soft moan of an appreciative woman or the sharp burn of a good single malt to make a man grateful to be alive. Tonight, with his gun gone and his sex life a wasteland, Dash had to settle for whiskey. "
― Amy Andrews , Limbo (The Joy Valentine Mysteries, #1)
6 " Our car would've burned up too, but Michael, who is only twelve, got in it and backed it away. I climbed in with him and noticed some of my school books in the car, so I took them out and threw them in the fire. I figured it would save me from doing a lot of homework, but unfortunately under the headline in the paper the next day that said HARPER'S MALT SHOP BURNS TO THE GROUND IN TRAGIC FIRE it also said that seen throwing her school books into the fire was little Daisy Fay Harper. Rat's foot! No wonder Hollywood stars hate reporters, and after all that some busybody do-gooder has already bought me a new set of books. "
― Fannie Flagg