Gary Reilly quotes:

I guided my heap into the heart of Capitol Hill wondering for the first time in fourteen years what I could do to get money besides drive cabs or rob banks. Both occupations had their pros and cons. For instance, bank robbery isn't quite as dangerous as cab driving, but it pays better.

A lot of artists start out as failed poets, then move on to being failed short-story writers before they finally break through to the big time and become failed novelists.

Work/Loaf Ratio"...I have spent fourteen years perfecting... I won't bore you with a long-winded explanation of the "W/LR" save to say that it is an algebraic formula of such complex numeric subtlety that it can be understood only by mathematicians and hobos.

Adverbs and cops always come in pairs.

Being a cab river is not unlike being a magician--minus the top hat, the cape, the rabbit, an the gorgeous assistant. But you do have an audience.

I'll take my alkaloid diuretics wherever I can get them. If there isn't a 7-11 in the vicinity, a Winchell's donut shop is Plan B. The joe at both places is almost indistinguishable, like the difference between Johnny Walker and Cutty Sark, but only cab drivers and hobos draw such fine distinctions.

I had never liked bullying of any sort, especially when an individual acquires his courage by becoming part of a faceless mob. I always say if you need fake courage, get it out of a bottle like I do.

It's a funny thing about writing. You get so balled up in a story idea that you lose your perspective and forget that human being might read your words someday.

My big dream back then was to buy an IBM Selectric. I still have that dream. I really ought to buy a word-processor. Half the cabbies at Rocky own computers. They tell me they can write failed novels ten times faster on a PC.

One thing I had learned in college was that if you ever had a question about truth, reality, or the meaning of existence, read a novel by Albert Camus. Pretty soon you'll be so baffled you'll forget the question.

That was how I was going to get things back to normal-by working. I never thought I would use the words "working" and "normal" in the same sentence, but I'll try anything to avoid facing reality.

... occasionally I see rich-looking women on Rollerblades gripping leashes and being towed bodily by golden retrievers. That's my kind of jogging.

They paid people to write books!!! Until that moment I had a vague idea that books were produced in factories, like tires, or else they grew on trees, like money."

For the past few weeks I have been laboring under the assumption that if people thought I was dead, they would stop annoying me and leave me alone."I didn't respond right away. I examined his statement from every angle, and while I admired the logic, the cockeyed optimism left me cold."

They paid people to write books!!! Until that moment I had a vague idea that books were produced in factories, like tires, or else they grew on trees, like money.

I have completed and uncompleted screenplays, but they both fall into the category of "unsold." I've seen quite a few movies where the screenplays seemed to be in the "uncompleted" category yet still got sold and made into movies, so I generally refer too all screenplays as "sold" or "unsold." But that's just my own filing system.

I was driving pretty much the way everyone drives in LA, like elephants dancing on each others' backs at a circus.

I was in the land of fakes and frauds and phonies-I felt like saying "Howdy cousin," to everybody who walked by.

I've been broke, and I've been in debt, and broke is better.

Money can't buy happiness"?but it can buy beer.

She looked confused. She looked off-balance. That's a technique I employ to get dates, and it always works.