Quote of the Day (David Sedaris, on a Past January Train Ride)

“[T]here was a smoking car on the Amtrak I took from Raleigh to Chicago in 1984, but seven years later it was gone. By then if you wanted a cigarette your only option was to head for the bar. It sounds all right in passing, romantic even—'the bar on the Lake Shore Limited’—but in fact it was rather depressing. Too bright, too loud, and full of alcoholics who commandeered the seats immediately after boarding and remained there, marinating like cheap kebabs, until they reached their destinations. At first, their voices might strike you as jolly: the warm tones of strangers becoming friends. Then the drinkers would get sloppy and repetitive, settling, finally, on that cross-eyed mush that passes for alcoholic sincerity.” —Comic essayist David Sedaris, on a January 1991 train ride, in “Reflections:Guy Walks into a Bar,” The New Yorker, Apr. 20, 2009