Of All the Gin Joints is one part cinematic history, one part old Hollywood weirdness, and one part handy basic bar guide, with a dash of romance and more than a few wry twists. Bailey and Hemingway prove themselves very entertaining cultural mixologists.

Shudder, in fact, is not quite the word for the feeling. Feeling is not quite the word for the feeling. How's bathing at knifepoint in the phlegm of the dead? Is that a feeling?

I'm a citizen of the republic of empathy.

People gave names to things so they could tell stories about them, goddam fairy tales about children who got out alive.

No emotion or insight is too small to inflict on the world. Let it all fly. Don't let it eat you from the inside.

You think you know yourself, the world. You believe you've got a bead on everybody else's bullshit, but what about your own?

Write what you know. Write what you don't know. But most of all, write what you'd rather not know.